This Old Dragon: Issue #138

October 1988.  I was a sophomore in college, but not just any college. I was at Southern Illinois University and Halloween was a HUGE deal. I debuted my first version of my "Astaroth" devil costume.  A couple of my friends got wasted, damaged part of the football field and got arrested.  I also "invented" the "Bush Whacker"; a double shot of vodka washed down with a Bush beer.  Never been able to drink vodka after that night.  My college roommate had a new girlfriend so I ended up with a dorm room all to myself.  It was pretty sweet really.  I had finished my first draft of the Witch class nearly two years prior and was now into deep playtesting and revising.   It's October 1988 and this is issue #138 of This Old Dragon!

As far as Dragons go I consider this one in my top five.  I remember walking to the bookstore down "The Strip" (Illinois Ave) to pick this up.  The cover could not be more Halloween-themed if it tried.   The material inside completely lives up to this cover.

Roger E. Moore is now the Editor, replacing the departing Kim Mohan.  I am not sure when exactly this took place, but I do know that this was the first issue I really noticed it.   This is post-Gygax TSR and if we didn't know that know we soon will.  Not that I am trying to draw parallels between Moore and the people that took over TSR.  Far from it.  But there was a new direction in art and in in content in Dragon and other TSR works that really began to show about this time.  It is easy to lump it all into 2nd Edition era, but it started before that.

Letters cover the lack of Dragon magazine indexes.

Nice big full ad for Space 1889. I picked up this game used not soon after, but sold it in one my "purging" moods.  I finally got another one at Half-Price books a while back.

The Forum covers a variety of topics, heavy on contributions from IL I notice.  At the time I really had no idea how good I had it.  I have heard of an Original D&D corridor that ran from Chicago and Lake Geneva all the way down to Carbondale, IL (where I was) and hitting nearly every major university along the way down south.  Even in my hometown, there were several independent D&D groups running at same time.   The Egyptian Campaign (in Carbondale, aka "Little Egypt") had been running since it's involvement with fellow Saluki (SIU alum) Tim Kask.   All I knew was I had access to books, games, and people and I thought everyone had this.  Later I learned this was not the case and one of the reasons these other games and supplements began popping up, to fill a gap.

We get some advice on painting undead in Through the Looking Glass.

Ad for Dragonfire computer-aided DM's software.  I know people that swore by this.

I have heard that this software had been released as share-ware, but I could be mistaken.

The unofficial start to our Halloween issue is Sage Advice. Here Skip Williams covers various questions about the undead that I found very useful.  I notice that a lot of what was written here later informed the undead monsters of 2nd Edition.

Page 15 we hit the meat of this issue, all about horror!

Up first a little something for the Call of Cthulhu game. The Black Book and the Hunters by Craig Schaefer introduces The Black Book of Shub-Niggurath and the Hunters of Shub-Niggurath (Greater Servitor Race).  While I am not sure if I ever used these in CoC, I certainly used a lot of ideas from this article in dealing with demons.  In fact, I penciled in "Lesser" and "Greater Servitor Race" on many demon entries.

Double page ad for the SF&F book club.  Some great books here!

Up next is something from none other than Tom Moldvay.  No wonder I love this article so much.
The Ungrateful Dead expands the ranks of the undead with some monsters I STILL use to this very day.  These horrors include The Bloody Bones, Skleros,  Dry Bones ("Dem Bones"), Gem Eyes, Shock Bones (something I had come with independently based on a nightmare I had as a kid), Galley Beggers, the Walking Dead, the Lesser and Greater Colossus, the hungery Dead, Le Grand Zombi, Ghula, Baka, Gelloudes, Spirit Ghouls, a Wendigo (!), Black Annis and her cat, and the vampire like Callicantzaros.  Whew. A ton of undead from myth, legend and popular culture. So many I have used over the others and others I had forgotten!

Up next is an article I have a bit of contention with.  Not this article per se, but ones like it.
Ed Friedlander gives us madness in fantasy RPGS in Methods to Your Madness.
The article itself is not bad and really focuses on the fantasy aspects of the game and the potential effects.  In general, I find many bits on madness, "insanity" and psychological impairment to be hamfisted at best and dangerously wrong at worst.  My background is in Psychology. I have undergraduate and graduate degrees in it. I spent years working as a Qualified Mental Health Professional in a group home setting with schizophrenics. I don't like "sanity" rules in most games.  I like the ones in Call of Cthulhu because they work within the confines of the system and the mythos.
The rules in this article work because they do not try to cleave to close to modern psychology.  Instead of a diagnosis of a disease, we get descriptions of behaviors.

Eileen Lucas is up with an article I didn't read much then but have since come back too many, many times. The End of the World: Of plagues, player characters, and campaign worlds.  I think I am not the only one.  Remember the old Knight Rider TV show?  Every season it seemed like they had to crash and nearly destroy KITT (and sometime Micheal) to only rebuild it and make it stronger, better.  I see this sometimes in Campagin Worlds.  We saw it in Greyhawk and I am not sure how many times in Krynn and the Forgotten Realms.  The article though is very, very good and has a lot of great ideas on how to end the world and start again.  At this time in my own gaming the "Dragon Wars" had just happened and my world had been largely destroyed.  When I wanted to bring my world back for 3e I went back to this article to read up on the plague and the after effects of wars.

We break from disease and death to talk about lasers.
Martin Landauer is next with Putting Fire into Firepower or lasers for the original Top Secret game.  I always thought of this as the bridge between Top Secret and Star Frontiers.  Maybe they were in the same universe.

The fiction piece is next, Between Lightning & Thunder by Nancy Varian Berberick.

Cool full page ad for DC Heroes with my first introduction to Amanda Waller.

The Role of Computers covers the then cutting edge of computer games. Many with new CGA graphics!  Many games are listed at around the $40-$45 area.  Interesting how the price of games has not changed all that much.

A couple of pages of small ads.

Role-playing Reviews covers a few horror-themed game titles.  Cthulhu Now is a supplement for the Call of Cthulhu changing the setting to modern times.  Future versions of CoC will fold this information into the core book to some degree.  GURPS Horror was at this time considered to be the MUST HAVE horror supplement for any game.  I remember looking for it for years in my local stores; so much for easy access!  Beyond the Supernatural was also considered one of the hot horror games of the late 80s.  It is notable not just for it's content but for also starting the writing career of many horror RPG authors like C.J. Carella who would later go on to write WitchCraft.

A page of TSR Previews. This features (and there is an ad later) the LAST AD&D hardcover to be produced, Greyhawk Adventures. This book was notable for being 1st Edition, but also having 2nd Edition AD&D stat blocks for monsters.

I can't help but notice that the blue background on this is almost the same blue background that will be later used for the AD&D 2nd Edition preview book.

Convention Calendar is next.

DragonMirth has some comics including newbie Yamara.
SnarfQuest hits episode #62.
There is no Wormy.  Little did I (or anyone else) know Tramp had moved and was living about 2 miles from where I was.

Lots of full color, full page ads.

Wow. What a packed issue.  AD&D 1st Ed was in it's twilight years and we all knew it.  What we didn't know was that soon AD&D players would engage in "The Edition Wars".  Yes there had always been the AD&D vs. D&D ones, but that was minor when it came to the 1st vs. 2nd ed or the TSR vs. WotC ones over the next, well, forever.

But until then we have this brief moment of stillness and this really great issue.

What are your memories of October 1988?

October Horror Movie Challenge: Underwater (2020)

Underwater (2020)

I was looking for a change of pace tonight and this one showed up as recommended.  Sure. Why not.

This one turned out to be rather fun to be honest.  Not great, but not bad either.  Kristen Stewart was actually pretty good in it. It was pretty much like every other deep-sea monster movie; man ventures to places where he is not supposed to go, sea monsters attack. 

This one had both "humanoid" sea creatures and a great big mother-like, kaiju creature.  It would not be a stretch to think of her as Mother Hydra from the Dagon myths.  Or even Cthulhu.
There are Cthulhu symbols drawn on the various maps, so there is that.
The director has even said the creature is supposed to be Cthulhu himself, but I think Dagon or Hydra works better.

This only reminds me I need to do a Lovecraft Filmfest one month.

Don't go to this movie looking for great insights or deep plotting.  But if you like sea monsters then this is a fun romp.

It does have T.J. Miller (Deadpool) and Jessica Henwick (Game of Thrones, Iron Fist) in it as well. So those are pluses.

Watched: 22
New: 14

NIGHT SHIFT and BlackStar Content:  A few notes.

A giant underwater creature is a little harder to pull off in a Night Shift or Old-School game.  But I am still thinking about my cross-generational game.  Maybe there is a London 1968 chapter, an Earth or Mars 2087 chapter (or even Enceladus which could be a vast Ocean), in any case, what is found here in 2087 on an under-water drilling base is a human, or near human, skeleton.  Then this leads to the mission in the 23rd century.  All horror.

So many good ideas really.

DriveThruRPG/RPGNow December sale

It's that time again for the DriveThru RPG monthly sales.
They give me codes to pass on to you for deals on products.
Here they are.  This month I wanted to add a bit more than just list the products.

• Adventure Companion  for FantasyCraft
  Some more tools for the tool-kit game Fantasy Craft. I have not played Fantasy Craft, nor do I own the books. But what I have seen looks very cool and looks like it is a neat extension of the basic d20 rules. If you have played this or bought this, let me know what you think!
• Age of Cthulhu 5: The Long Reach of Evil for Call of Cthulhu
  An adventure from Goodman Games and for the Call of Cthulhu system. 5th in the series. Looks cool.
• Smallville: The Watchtower Report for Smallville
  Part "Bad Guy Sourcebook" and part "Season 10" update. This is the book that makes Smallville feel more like a Supers game to me. If you are a fan of the Smallville RPG, then this is a great choice.
• Huxtropy for D&D 4e
  I had not seen this one till getting ready for this post. It is an interesting concept to be sure. It is well done and a neat addition to magic rules. The book itself is nice looking and certainly "looks" like it is worth more than the 5 bucks (or 4 bucks for you using the code below) they are charging. I will consider using this in my games.
• Shambles for the Brains (?!)
  Interesting take on the latest round of Zombie craze. The twist here is you get to play a zombie. I got it as something to mine for All Flesh Must Be Eaten, but it is a good game in it's own right.

Here is the code that gives 20% off the entire list above: HolidayHooplah2011
This is good until January 18th, 2012.

Enjoy!

#7RPGS

Over at Google+ #7RPGs  there is new meme making the rounds and Gnome Stew has picked up.
The idea is to post your 7 RPGs you have most played or GMed.

So lets give it a go!

1. Dungeons & Dragons (all editions) I am combining these all into one category since my games have a 30+ year continuity.  This is the one I started with and continue to play to this day.  It is also number one on my running list. I have played and run all editions of D&D.  Well...I have never run OD&D, only played it.

2. Buffy/Angel/Army of Darkness/Ghosts of Albion.
We began playtesting Buffy in 2002.  I played it pretty much from the second the rules hit the playtesters. I wrote for all the books as well, so it should be no surprise that this one is so high.  When I started on Ghosts of Albion I moved the campaign wholesale to that. I still get to run this quite a bit, but not play as much as I would like.

http://timbrannan.blogspot.com/search/label/ghosts%20of%20albion

3. WitchCraft (along with AFMBE & Armageddon).  From 1999 to 2002 WitchCraft was my only game. I had given up on D&D at this point and Buffy and Ghosts had not been written yet.  It was (and is still really) everything I wanted in a game. It's perfect in my mind. When I pitched the idea of Ghosts of Albion to Eden I wanted it to use WitchCraft as it's base.  Thankfully I was talked out of that in favor of the same system for Buffy.  While OD&D and 4e have less in common than WitchCraft and Buffy, I separate WitchCraft from Buffy because of how they are played.

http://timbrannan.blogspot.com/search/label/unisystem

4. BESM. I played this quite a bit in the early part of the 2000s with my son, trying to find a game he would enjoy.  I grabbed this because I was looking for something to work as a more powerful version of Buffy with some super hero and some anime influences. It was a fun game and I wish that it had done better in the market.

http://timbrannan.blogspot.com/search/label/BESM

5. Mutants & Masterminds. I enjoy supers games and have tried a number of them over the years, but M&M is my favorite.  I love pretty much everything about it. I enjoy the background, the rules, even how the rules were created and what they meant to the OGL. I am also happy that M&M 3 is the same system being used for DC Adventures.  I have run this a few times and played it a few but would like to do it more.

 

http://timbrannan.blogspot.com/search/label/mutants%20masterminds

6. Call of Cthulhu.  While I have mentioned my fondness for Chill, many, many times I never got a chance to play it or run it very much.  On the other hand I have played Call  of Cthulhu a few times int he 80s.  I was going to run it in the 2000s, but Ghosts of Albion and Buffy distracted me. Still this is the pinacle of horror games and I have always enjoyed it.

http://timbrannan.blogspot.com/search?q=cthulhu

7. World of Darkness (oWod).  World of Darkness changed everything.  To think otherwise is to ignore all the facts. I loved what Vampire did for all horror games  and games in general, though I will be honest that I didn't see it at the time.  My game was Mage.I thought it was fantastic and so near perfect.  It turned out I would later find the perfect game (WitchCraft) but I still really enjoyed this game. I picked up all the New World of Darkness games but they seemed to lack something of the original games had even if the new rules were better.

http://timbrannan.blogspot.com/search/label/world%20of%20darkness

Links to others
http://towerofzenopus.blogspot.com/2012/12/the-7-games-youve-played-most.html
http://derekas.blogspot.com/2012/12/7rpgs-as-player.html
http://derekas.blogspot.com/2012/12/7rpgs.html
http://www.gnomestew.com/crock-pot/the-7-rpgs-youve-gmed-the-most-and-the-7-rpgs-youve-played-the-most/
http://rathergamey.blogspot.com/2012/12/top-games.html

March Madness OSR Challenge! Part 1

I have bitten off more than I can chew this month.
New month is the big April A to Z blog challenge and this month I need get some more done for work and my witch book.

Plus I am still sick.

So....I am going to have to do this in chunks.
I want to thank Tomb of Tedankhamen for hosting this.

1 What was the first roleplaying game other than D&D you played? Was it before or after you had played D&D?
It was over 30 years ago so it was either Traveller or Chill 1st Ed. This was all after D&D.

2 What was the first character you played in an RPG other than D&D? How was playing it different from playing a D&D character?
I ran Chill. My first character I played in another game was "Zaphod" in Traveller.  The skill system was a new idea for me and I liked it.  Plus the D&D mode of "kill things and take their stuff" doesn't work in most games.

3 Which game had the least or most enjoyable character generation?
In my mind the character creation for Traveller gave me the most trouble.  The easiest is anything for Unisystem. I can pretty much create a character for Unisystem in my sleep.

4 What other roleplaying author besides Gygax impressed you with their writing?
Easy.  C. J. Carella. His WitchCraft game is a work of art. He created the Unisystem game system and the Cinematic Unisystem.  I was fortunate enough to be working on the Buffy the Vampire Slayer RPG when it was in development.

5 What other old school game should have become as big as D&D but didn’t? Why do you think so?
Chill. It lived in the shadow of Call of Cthulhu. Of course Chill is seeing some new light from Goblinoid Games in the guise of Rotworld,  Majus and Cryptworld.

6 What non-D&D monster do you think is as iconic as D&D ones like hook horrors or flumphs, and why do you think so?
I am not sure that flumphs are as iconic as say beholders or mind flayers, but that is a discussion for later. For other games  I always liked shoggoths and gugs from Call of Cthulhu.  The "Mean Old Neighbor Lady" from Chill is also fairly iconic for that game.

7 What fantasy RPG other than D&D have you enjoyed most? Why?
Runequest. I liked it because of it's connection the the Chaosism's BRP system which meant I could add in things from the Elric/Stormbringer/Hawkmoon games and Call of Cthulhu as I liked.

8 What spy RPG have you enjoyed most? Give details.
None. Not my cup of tea really.  I liked how Spycraft was put together, but I never played it.

P is for Psychoses and Pet-Peeves

I have an undergraduate and a graduate degree in Psychology.  I spent three years working at a facility for the mentally ill that were trying to integrate back into society.   Most never had a chance in hell of doing this, but they still worked towards it.

So naturally you might think that I would like to see mental illnesses represented in RPGs.

Well that would be wrong.

Most of my pet peeves revolve around how mental illness or "craziness" is often represented in RPGs.  For a group of intelligent, literate people, this get bolloxed up more times than I can count.

I think Call of Cthulhu does it right.  I think the True20 "Shadows of Cthulhu" also does a good job on representing them and does a great job with their mechanics.  Many horror games make a good attempt, but others fall short.


Here are some of the things I hate the most.


1. Most severe mental illnesses are debilitating if not treated and cared for.  In today's world we have doctors, medicines and support systems so people with mental illnesses can live a relatively normal life.  That is not the case in many games.  In Call of Cthulhu for example characters often go shit-eating crazy and that is the end game.  But in other games people use it as an excuse to act like an idiot or an asshole, or both.  Often both.

2. Schizophrenia is NOT "Split Personality".  They are not even close.  Having schizophrenia is grounds for a character to removed from play.  Split Personality, or Dissociative Identity Disorder  is so rare that I can count the case I have know about on one hand and still have enough fingers left over to give you the thumbs up, the peace sign and show you my wedding ring.  A lot of games use this as an excuse to allow characters to do thing they could not otherwise do.  In that case, multi-class.

3. Chaotic Neutral is not "Insane". In my games Chaotic Neutral is not insane. Nor should it be in anyone's game.  Chaotic Neutrals should be loners, often anti-social, often assholes.  OR they could be happy go lucky, but if they are on the happy side then why are they not Chaotic Good?  Alignment is a moral and ethical stance, not a mental stability one.

4. Most games should not have Insanity Rules.  Players don't know how to use them, Game masters don't how to run them and I'll go a step further and say most designers don't know how to write them.  A rule of thumb. If you are playing in a time period that lacked mental health care then there is no such thing as insanity.  Yes there are mental illnesses, but insanity is a legal definition and often a societal one.
Fantasy RPGS like D&D should never have insanity rules.  Horror games should, but handled correctly.  Modern games can have them, but should avoid them; games like Spycraft and James Bond they might make good plot points, but avoid using them as a means to get points.

5. If you are going to use them, use them in the time they are given.  I said games like D&D should not have them and that is correct.  People were not insane, they were possessed by evil spirits.  A cleric with Remove Curse or something will clear that up.  If you are playing in a Victorian age game, then use Victorian notions of mental illness.  Talk about "floating organs" and then apply to appropriate remedy.

Now full disclosure time.

I have written a number of different takes on Psychoses for games over the years.  I have never been totally satisfied with any of them.  Most recent was one for Mutants and Masterminds based book that sadly will not see publication.  I like the mechanics of that one, but the representation was not my best work.  I did one for Ghosts of Albion too.  I tried to fit it to the Victorian ideas of mental illness the best I could AND still make it compatible with Eden's other books.
I also did one for Ravenloft that I liked at the time, but now see it as coming up very, very short of the mark.

And lets be honest here.  Player Characters are all insane anyway.
Rushing into dungeons, killing monsters in their lairs to get a gold piece here or there.  Digging through obscure and forgotten texts to discover not only are we insignificant specs in the universe but the universe is so freaking dangerous we should just hide under the covers or any of the other 100 things we have our characters do.

We don't need a game version of the DSM-IV, we all need therapists.

Kickstart Your Weekend: Adventure! Romance! Chaos! Horror!

Lots of new Kickstarters out there.  So many in fact. Let's have a look!

Mini-Adventure #1: Shadow of the Necromancer 1E/5E & Box Set

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/marktaormino/mini-adventure-1-shadow-of-the-necromancer-1e-5e-and-box-set

Mark Taormino and Dark Wizard Games has another gonzo adventure for us, this time for both 1st Ed and 5th Ed D&D. As always it looks like great fun.

Swords & Chaos

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/blackspirefantasy/swords-and-chaos

Swords & Chaos is powered by the SIEGE Engine, the same system in Castles & Crusades. Looks like it is cut from the same cloth as AS&SH or Barbarians of Lemuria.

Tome of Adventure Design

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/adventuredesigntome/tome-of-adventure-design

A revised and updated Tome of Adventure design for 2022.  I have the original and it is really useful to whip up something in a pinch.

An Unexpected Wedding Invitation (5e)

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/midnight-tower/an-unexpected-wedding-invitation

A bit of change here is a Jane Austin-ish-inspired wedding mystery for 5e. Looks like a lot of fun.

Shield Maidens: A New Viking/Cyberpunk Tabletop RPG

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1990654819/shield-maidens-a-new-viking-cyberpunk-tabletop-rpg

Ok, this one sounds interesting.  Mixing cyberpunk, pre-apocalypse, and Norse myth.  There is also a free preview to get your first shield maiden built.  It is its own system, but it still looks fun.

The Art of Ménage à 3

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/pixietrixcomix/the-art-of-menage-a-3

Now for something completely different.  Ménage à 3 was a fantastic webcomic about three roommates hopelessly in love with each other.  But that did not mean things worked out! It also launched the career of  Gisèle Lagacé.  This has art from the comic and new pieces.

Old Gods of Appalachia Roleplaying Game

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/montecookgames/old-gods-of-appalachia-roleplaying-game

Dark weird folk horror from Monte Cook? YEAH! Sign me the hell up! It is the Cypher system and you know the production values will be high.

FAST Core Rulebook - Multi-Genre RPG System

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/563681582/fast-core-rulebook-multi-genre-rpg-system

A new multi-genre system that looks like it has a LOT of potential.  I like multi-genre systems since I tend to mix a lot of things together in one game. 

Swords of Cthulhu

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/brwgames/swords-of-cthulhu

Another cool one from Joseph Bloch who has a stellar Kickstarter track record.  This one brings the Lovecraftian mythos back (or back again) to AD&D/OSRIC.

Lots of choices!

White Dwarf Wednesday #75

White Dwarf #75 takes us back to March 1986 with new(ish) Editor-in-chief Ian Livingstone.
The cover is a very Call of Cthulhuesque one with Buckaroo Banzai and Elvira battling a creature on a chees board floor.  Just out of curiosity I wonder if One Night in Bangkok had be released in the UK at this point? (yes...almost a year before.)
Ian Livingstone gets right in and talks about the changes that have been happening and more are on the way.  But we knew that really.  The changes we are seeing here are not really abrupt; they have been happening for a while now, but they do become apparent in later issues.

Open box is getting into a wider variety of games, but a lot of them seem to come from Games Workshop:  There is the Supervisor's Kit for Golden Heroes (8/10), Terror of the Lichemaster for Warhammer (9/10), Judgement Day for Judge Dredd (9/10) and Cosmic Encounter Boardgame (8/10).  The only non-GW game this issue is Fragments of Fear by Chaosium for Call of Cthulhu (7/10).  Detecting a trend here.

Critical Mass is back.  I only want to touch on a couple of things here.  Dave Langford talks about how long C. J. Cherryh's Forty Thousand in Gehenna is.  I agree. But that didn't stop me from using it and going back to it time and time again for ideas for my AD&D games (despite it being Scifi).  There is also a title I have never seen before, "Sex Secrets of Ancient Atlantis".  Looks fun.

2020 covers some mid 80s horror  movies. The Return of the Living Dead and Fright Night are featured.  I enjoyed the heck out of Fright Night despite (or because of) the gruesomeness that reviewer Colin Greenland seems to disdain.  Word of advice, if you don't like gore, don't review horror movies.  He also mentions Teen Wolf which is horror only in the way that connecting puberty to lycanthropy in the hands of Micheal J. Fox can be.  Which is to say, not at all.  Granted it isn't a horror movie.  To see a much better take on this idea see Ginger Snaps.

Oliver Dickinson has some thoughts on the upcoming RuneQuest 3.
Pete Tamlyn has ideas on Superhero games. There are ideas here to make Superhero games, and by proxy comics, more adult oriented (not themed) and they are not bad.  This article though fails today because it was too close, but on the other side, of the great breakout of the Graphic Novel.  Yes, the Dark Knight Returns was just out and Watchmen was on the way, it was still just a little too late (or early depending on your view) for the masses.

Gamemanship covers some idea on how to put the mystery back into AD&D.  Some of the ideas would later see similar treatments in AD&D titles like Ravenloft and eventually story-based gaming.  Most of it is still good advice today.

Mass Media by Andrew Swift covers how the news is delivered in various Tech Levels in Traveller.  My personal favorite is his predictions of the smart phone-like device in which to read the news on (TL 10) AND Google Glass (TL 11).  I mock Traveller often, and really unfairly so, for it's ideas on computers.  But this one was really fun to read.  There are ideas for characters too.  I now have a desire to play or run a bunch of intrepid reporters and muckrakers for the Galactic News Service.

Graeme Davis gives us "Nightmare in Green" an AD&D adventure for 4-8 4th-6th level characters.   There is the adventure and a few new monsters which is nice.  I like adventures that introduce a new, maybe one-off monster. Also it helps make up for the loss of Fiend Factory.

The Heart of the Dark is a Call of Cthulhu scenario.  It deals with a murder and you know it only gets worse from there.  I have always liked WD Call of Cthulhu adventures.  Actually most of their adventures for any game are rather good.

Treasure Chest has something really nice, a system for Character Backgrounds for AD&D.  Today we add a +2 to some skill that you had before you took up the adventuring life, but since AD&D is not like that this works out rather nice.

Tabletop Heroes covers oil painting.

Not a bad start to the stewardship of Ian Livingstone.  The articles and adventures are good.  Open Box seems a bit doggy to me, even given the gushing reviews gamers typically give their favorite games.

White Dwarf Wednesday #60

The beginning of the 60s takes us to the end of 1984 which may have been one of the best years in gaming.  Issue #60 comes to us from Dec. 1984.  Let's talk about the cover for a bit.  Two warriors on horseback, one with a woman behind, either fighting or raising their weapons in salute to each other.  Majestic castle in the background.  I think I like to think these are not enemies; their stances do not scream combat to me though that is what the artist had in mind I think.  Doesn't matter. The cover is 30 years old and I get to see what I like now.  Again, we have Chris Achilleos to thank for this one.

Ian Livingstone kicks things off with an editorial about the price of metal minis and how they have tripled in price.  I never bought many metal minis myself, price being one of the factors, but mostly I can't paint worth a damn.  It seems odd to me that the idea of doing plastic minis didn't catch on then.  I think that the metal ones were very detailed (still are) and preferred by the people that do the painting (still are).  Hard for me to say really, not at all my area of expertise.

Up first is First Issues or how to start a supers game.  Really, if you are looking to start up, re start up or even just reboot a supers game then this is a must read.  They suggest minis, which I like and is not really as needed as they say, but you can also use good old fashioned action figures.

Open Box has a few classics on hand.  The Elfquest RPG from Chaosium is up.  I dismissed this game as a "kiddie" game back in the day.  Yeah, yeah I know how wrong I was now.  Murray Writtle rubs salt in that old wound by giving it a 9/10.  Three modules from TSR are up.  In case there was any doubt that this is the Silver Age of Gaming, included in this group is DL1 Dragons of Despair, the first Dragonlance module.  Now at the time I liked this and thought the concept was cool, new and exciting.  Graham Staplehurst agress and gives it an 8/10.  I have to admit I hated (and still do to far lesser degree) the Kender.  Also up are the next two UK modules in the new trade dress. UK2 and UK3 get 8/10 and 7/10 respectively also from Graham Staplehurst.

Graeke Davis has part 2 of the magical item manufacture rules.  This time covering rods and potions; ie things all characters can use.  Again, these have been superceded by similar rules in 3.x, but the flavor is great and it is much more than a list of spells and XP expenditures.  When dealing with magic in games, flavor text is often everything.

Steve Williams and Jon Sutherland are up with The Bleeding Stone of Iphtah (god choice for I day!) this scenario for Call of Cthulhu featuring one of my favorite races, the Yithians or Great Race.  CoC works best when it works in small doses like this. A mystery, some investigation, 1 (and not much more) monster or race and really nothing from the Great Old Ones.  If Cthulhu shows up in your game then play D&D.  This adventure is nearly perfect for me.  I'd love to try it either as a Cthulhu by Gaslight one or a Ghosts of Albion one.

Marcus Rowland has some tips for Scifi gaming.  If I was smart I should scan these in or copy them and put them in a folder for the next time I try Traveller.

Stuart Hunter as an AD&D adventure "The Fear of Leefield" for 4-6 characters of 3-5 level. The adventure is longish. It uses a new race from a whle back (Mandrake people) and has a new spell and magic item.  The scenario involves slavers and drugs, so it could be used just about anywhere.

Microview is back with some computer games.  Games Workshop was in the Sinclair Spectrum games biz for a bit and gives us Tower of Despair (also known as Argent Warrior). This game lives up to it's claim of "State of the Art" graphics and gets a 9/10 from Kevin Westbury. D-Day is also reviewed and gets a 9/10 from Andrew Miller. Lindsay Paton gives Lords of Midnight 9/10 as well.
Now here is an interesting thing going on here.  The Atari for all intents and purposes is seeing a decline in the home game market at this point while computer games are getting better and better.  Is the silver Age of RPGs related to the rise of computer games?  Or visa versa?  There were certainly some interesting things going on in 1984/85 on both fronts.

Ars Arcana details the uses of various new 8th and 9th level spells from AD&D.  I have read lots of articles like this over the years, a DIY in D&D (not DIYD&D) if you will.  Doing more with the tools you already have. Always a good idea or two.

Fiend Folio is up with some new AD&D monsters.  Felines, Fungi and Phantoms is the subtitle. We get a Bush Cat that changes stats as it ages. Also there is the Helghost, or an undead magic-user that was particularly vile in life.

Letters tackles such topics as Thrud and why won't WD cater to every type of gamer everywhere.

RuneRites has some monsters. I think. Hard to say really. There are pictures of monsters, there are stats, but I am not sure if I am supposed to take the Furballs, Wereballs, and Dragonballs seriously or not.  They look like Pokemon to be honest.

Table top heroes details brushing techniques.

News is up. First note is the Mayfair / TSR dust up is over. some rumors of Milton Bradley and Parker Brothers getting into the RPG market. Major new British RPG is on the way Dragonroar is set to take the world by storm.

Ads, and finally that last nail in the coffin of the Golden Age, an ad for software graces the back cover. Not only that but for Adventure Writer, a program that allows you to create the adventure in English on your computer.

If there was ever a doubt that we are in a new age, look no further than issue 60.  1984 was a big year in gaming. Lots of changes. Even the covers of the now classic AD&D are changing.  Next time it's 1985.

If you are looking for my A to Z post, just scroll down.

Plays Well With Others: B/X Gangbusters

Yesterday I reviewed the new B/X Gangbusters game and talked about its potential due to its Basic-era roots.  I stand behind that and a recent dive into some of my favorite Basic-era games supports this.  So let's see how well Gangbusters, B/X edition Plays Well With Others.

Realms of Crawling Chaos
Both are built on similar B/X designs.  Realms of Crawling Chaos adds Lovecraftian Horrors to your B/X Gangbusters games.  Both also support the same era of play, more or less, and have similar offerings in terms of playing normal humans. In fact, adding Realms of Crawling Chaos can add an edge to your "Educated" characters they might not normally have. 

Of course, at this point, you might ask why not just play Call of Cthulhu or d20 Call of  Cthulhu.  The answer, of course, is to be able to play this as a B/X game.

Amazing Adventures
AA is a Pulp-era game based in and on the 1930s; so about a decade later.  But there is still a lot in this game that would be helpful to the Gangbusters player or Judge. Not to belabor it, but the are equipment lists here that have different items that the GB Basic book.  The Amazing Adventures classes also give the GB Judge some go ideas for playing Powered Characters.

Basic Psionics Handbook
Moving further afield we have Richard LeBlanc's Basic Psionics Handbook.   While psionics have a "complicated" relationship to Fantasy games, they seem to work just fine in semi-modern ones.  In particular, a psionic wild talent would fit well into a GB game.  Let's not forget that the 1920s was also the time of Harry Houdini and his magic shows.  In real life he was a debunker of claims of the supernatural, but who knows what he was doing in YOUR world.

This along with Realms of the Crawling Chaos gives you a Lovecraftian style game that is less "Call of Cthulhu" and more "Cast a Deadly Spell".
I want to try this with a hard-boiled private eye that used to be a boxer and has seen a little too much magic.  I'll have to name him Robert Howard Lovecraft.

Starships & Spacemen 2e
Moving even further out from Psionics we have another one from Goblinnoid Games, Starships & Spacemen.  How does this one work?  Glad you asked!  One of my favorite Star Trek Episodes is "A Piece of the Action" where the crew of the Enterprise beam down to Sigma Iota II to investigate the crash of the Horizon from 100 years earlier.  They discover that the Iotians, a very creative and intelligent humanoid race, have recreated Chicago from the 1920s based on the book "Chicago Mobs of the Twenties", which had been published in (their version of) 1992.  The Iotians recreated their entire civilization based on this book.  At the end of the episode, it is revealed that Dr. McCoy misplaced his communicator.  Kirk and Spock state they will analyze the technology and that by the time they come back they could be the Federation.

There was an attempt to do a sequel to this by Michael Piller for TNG and some comics.  For me though, it was a throw-away section in the FASA TNG Officer's Manual that when the Federation came back to Sigma Iota II that they found a fully functional Federation style Space Station waiting for them.  Frankly, I would use that in a heartbeat for my own BlackStar games.  Maybe even adopt Piller's idea that this was a Federation, with the morality of the Chicago gangs.
It sounds like a lot of fun really.  I'd steal more ideas from FASA Trek for this too, including the interim uniforms they were using for the Enterprise-C era.   I will have to come back to this.

There is a lot more you could do with Gangbusters and the vast library of Basic-era B/X compatible material out there.

White Dwarf Wednesday #56

It's August 1984 and White Dwarf 56 is on the shelves and newsstands.

I have felt that the last few issues of White Dwarf, and my reviews of them, have been in something of a rut.  So for this issue I think instead of dedicating time to the minutia of the issue,  I will instead highlight sections and talk about what they meant to me then and now.

Interestingly enough I am starting in the same place; the editorial.  Ian Livingstone (and if memory serves these are among his last issues) talks about the state of the British RPG hobby.  While in retrospect I can see what he is saying, but back in 84 England was this magical land where True Roleplaying games come from.  Even the best American games had English roots.  Or so I thought.  Imagine my surprise living in Illinois that Ground Zero for RPGS was just a couple hundred miles north of me.  When I got to college I heard stories about how Gary would come down to SIU to play D&D. The store I was mail ordering from to get rare items (like White Dwarf) was in a Chicago suburb I would later move too and stay for 10 years.  So my perspective then was one of an anglophile living in a town that was in the middle of a cornfield and not really based on any reality.  It is interesting though that reading this now I do still think of the British RPG market as being more serious.  I think this is largely due to White Dwarf itself.
It was about this time I was HEAVY into Doctor Who, so the FASA game was on my must have list.

Up next is an article about playing Ninjas in FRPGs.  In the early 80s everyone was obsessed with Japanese culture and society.  Though I guess ninjas never really go out of style. I have played exactly 1 ninja my entire  gaming life.  His name was (horrible I know) Oko-nishi.  My lame attempts at a Japanese sounding name.  In my defense at what I knew was bad I made him a half-orc.  It must have been around this time I made him too using the Oriental Adventure rules.  My then DM and I had worked up a D&D combat simulator and we plugged him in with 9 other characters.  He was attacked by a Black Dragon (or Red, cant recall) and killed. The dragon kept attacking him and only him.  We had not worked out all the errors. In the end he had been reduced to something like -70 hp.  My DM offered to let him be ok, or keep him dead. We enjoyed watching it so much and getting the mental image of this dragon jumping up and down on my dead ninja that I felt it was a waste to say it never happened.
I am pretty sure that my half-orc ninja was not based on the cover of this issue.

Open Box switches to a new format. The games are now on "cards" like an offset window, self contained.  It makes it easier to see what you are reading and jump to a particular game, but the space economy is terrible.     The review I focused on was the World of Harn game.  It gets a 6/10.

A few more pages in we get something that was a feature of Dragon, the stating up of book characters.  In this case The Belgariad by David Eddings. This is something I do to this day. The issue then as now is that characters in books, movies or TV are not built according to the D&D rules.  We saw that a couple of issues back with Gandalf cast as a Cleric.  There is an ad for the books later in the magazine.

Up next is an interesting Call of Cthulhu game that takes place in the future on a distant planet. The Last Log is an interesting thing really. I was not expecting to see CoC used like this, but of course it works.  The creatures of Lovecraft's stories are more alien than demonic.    This very notion will be explored again and again till most recently with Eldritch Skies and Cthulhu Tech.
The adventure itself would fit in nicely with either of the newer products above and it was a nice bit of forward thinking.  Not so forward was the "dot matrix printer paper" of the layout, but hey.

We also get an AD&D adventure on an island.

The minis section works with the Cthulhu adventure (which some are used) and/or Traveller or Star Frontiers.

We get more ads in the middle of the magazine, similar to the style of Dragon including one for the new Dragonlance modules.

Fiend Factory seems to get back to made it so good in the past, really neat monsters.  This issue has monsters from the Planes.

An article on Tech in D&D.  For no reason better than "I don't wanna!" I never liked tech in D&D including black powder.

The newstand reports that TSR is releasing the Companion Rules. Finally.  I had moved on to AD&D at this point and was not a fan of the Mentzer books.  Now I am of course. Also excitement over the new Indiana Jones game that is due out.  An interesting bit about a new movie based on H.P. Lovecraft's The Colour Out of Space is being made.  Wonder what happened to it?

Near the end we get one of the first of what I call the "classic" ads for MERP from ICE.

So in truth this is a better issue than the previous ones.  The common thread is taking the game you are playing and doing something new with them.  Maybe we are turning a corner here.

Ten Favorite RPG Products of All Time

This started over at Dyvers blog and has now spread to others:
http://dyverscampaign.blogspot.com/2014/03/my-ten-favorite-rpg-products-of-all-time.html
http://realmsofchirak.blogspot.com/2014/03/death-bats-top-ten-favorite-rpg-books.html
http://ongoingcampaign.blogspot.com/2014/03/top-10-gaming-products.html

Not sure if this is a thing yet or not.  And many of us have answered these questions in some form or another over the years I am sure.  But it is still fun to read and do.

In no particular order and sometimes the entries are representative of a larger collection.

10. AD&D Monster Manual
The first RPG product I ever held or read.  It grabbed my attention in such a profound way that it is still, 35 years later, to fully quantify.  It fueled a life-time of fun and adventure.
Special Mention: AD&D Dungeon Master's Guide.
Nearly it's equal in effect but a superior book.  It just didn't get to my hands first.
Read more at: 1st Ed, D&D

9. Moldvay D&D Basic Set
A lot of people talk about "the Red Box". My Red Box was magenta and had Erol Otis on the cover.  For me this was the start of what became "my" D&D. Not someone else's game, but my own. I got my first set of dice in the box. I read and reread that book at least hundred times.
Special Mention: Cook/Marsh D&D Expert Set
Again, it might even superior to the Basic box just for everything it added.  But Basic comes first.
Read more at: D&D, Basic

8. Chill
Chill. I have talked about Chill so much and with good reason. This is the mid-west, monster fighting, "bumping back the things that go bump in the night", game where average Joes and Janes can stand against the darkness and walk away at the end.   While I have a special place in my heart for the Mayfair version, it is the 1st edition Pacesetter version that I think back too.
Special Mention: Chill Vampires
If I can only ever have one vampire hunting book then let it be this one.
Read more at: Chill, Vampires

7. Mage the Sorcerer's Crusade
"The Old Ways are Lost".  I love the the Renaissance; the idea of the world waking up out of darkness and ignorance to bring science and learning to all.  Ok. It didn't happen like that, but it can in a game and this if the best of the lot.  Plus it is old school magic versus new world science.  It takes what is great about Mage and makes so much more cooler.
Special Mention: Vampire the Masquerade
You can't have the Sorcerer's Crusade without Mage and you can't have Mage without Vampire the Masquerade.  VtM changed gaming in the 90s and it's effects can still seen today even far beyond gaming.
Read more at:  World of Darkness

6. Ravenloft Boxed Set
I loved the Ravenloft Module I6.  The boxed set Realms of Terror was just the thing I needed for my 2nd Ed games.  I loved horror, vampires, witches and this seemed like the perfect mix for me.  In fact I played so much Ravenloft that it is difficult for me to tease it apart from 2e.  They are the same for me really.
Special Mention:  Ravenloft Masque of the Red Death
What is the only way to improve Ravenloft?  Stick it on 19th century Earth and throw Dracula at the players.  There are many places where this game doesn't work, but I loved it all the same.
Read more at: Ravenloft, Victorian

5. Nightmares of Mine
This handy little guide is everything you need to run every sort of horror game. Straight up horror, survival horror, personal horror, comedy horror. You name it, this book covers it. It is small, but not cheap.
Special Mention: GURPS Horror
I have often complained that GURPS, as a game, has no soul, but the supplements can't be beat.  GURPS Horror is one of my favorites. Like Nightmares of Mine it covers how to play a number of different types of horror games.
Read more at: Horror

4. Call of Cthulhu
THE horror game.  I have always enjoyed the works of Lovecraft and in many ways CoC is not just the first horror game but also the first RPG based on a property.  The system itself, the Basic-Roleplaying System, also gave such fun games as RuneQuest and Elric/Stormbringer.
Special Mention: Cthulhu by Gaslight
As much as I love the cosmic horror of Lovecraft, Gothic horror is one of my first loves.  This is a great mix of both.
Read more at: Call of Cthulhu, BRP, Lovecraft

3. Role-Aids Witches
How could I not put this one up?  I have always rather liked Mayfair and their Role-Aids books.  The quality varies with some being quite bad.  But this one is great.  I had already been working on my own witch for a number of years when this one came out, but seeing it on the shelves made me happy. I knew I was working on something that at least one company liked.  Witches didn't invent the idea of Traditions, but it did help define it a little bit better.  Though I am still not a fan of the Deryni Witch.  Partly because I didn't think their concept worked as a witch and mostly because I had just left an OD&D game where we played Deryni as a race.  But in any case this is still one of my favorite third-part supplements to D&D.
Special Mention: Dragon #114
Most gamers of my generation remember this as the witch issue.  There is a lot to like about it, but what keeps this one around for me is the witch class.
Read more at: Witch

2. Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea
I have gone on and on (and on) about my love of this game. To me it really is the pinnacle of what the OSR could do.  Plus it has such a great feel to it and honestly it combines every that has been on this list so far.  D&D, horror soaked lands, monsters and things from beyond. All in a red box!
Special Mention: Basic Fantasy
Basic Fantasy to me represents the best DIY spirit of OSR and the community. It also happens to be a gret set of rules and is almost exactly how we played our Basic/Advanced D&D mashups back in the 80s.
Read more at: AS&SH, OSR, Basic

1.  C.J. Carella's WitchCraft
There has only been one game ever that has come close to displacing D&D in my heart and that is C.J. Carella's WitchCraft.  For me this game has everything I wanted in a modern game with a great back story, fantastic art and a magic system that really is second to none.
Special Mention: Ghosts of Albion
I know. Totally cheesy mentioning your own game, but it is true. Ghosts of Albion is not only my favorite Victorian game, but also my 256 page love letter to WitchCraft. 
Read more at: Witch, Unisystem, Ghosts of Albion

Review: SURVIVE THIS!! What Shadows Hide

 I want to spend some time with one of the newer RPGs in Bloat Games' line of SURVIVE THIS!!  Today I want to look at their modern monster-hunting horror game What Shadows Hide.

I say "newer," but these have been around for a bit.  There are two books in the line, the Core Rules and the Cthulhu Sourcebook. For the purposes of this review I am considering both the PDF and Print versions of these books. There are at this time no Print On Demand versions, I bought these from Bloat Games at Gary Con in 2022.

SURVIVE THIS!! What Shadows Hide: The Roleplaying Game

250 pages. Black & White cover and interior art. 
$9.99 PDF.

If you have followed any of my reviews of the various Bloat Game offerings then you will know that I am a big fan of their games and the SURVIVE THIS!! system that powers their games. Like the previous games (in particular Dark Places & Demogornons and We Die Young) this is a horror game. Though the feel to this one is a bit different. This is not the 1980s or 1990s anymore, this is a game with real stakes, real horrors and people dedicated to fighting them.

Up front, if you have played or own any of the other SURVIVE THIS!! games then a lot here will feel familiar. The rules sections are largely the same as are the rules for creating characters, combat, and some of the monsters.  This time the authors address this and mention this is done for maximum compatibility between the game lines. You can take classes from any SURVIVE THIS!! game and use them here and visa-versa. 

The joy of this game though is what it brings that is new. And there is plenty of that.

The game largely follows a similar path to that first taken by the Chill RPG. You have professionals working in various areas of the government (or other places) and they interact with an organization known as C.A.R.E., Conservers of the Ancient Realm of Earth. Think of them like BPRD, SCP, or even good old SAVE. Many characters will be involved with C.A.R.E., but you don't have to do that in your games (CARE-less?), the point is there is a connected group that does it's best to fight back against the monsters of the night.

Character Creation

Characters can have a Race, Occupation, and a Class. Races include Dimensional Forsaken (Angels and Demons), Doppelgangers, Fairies,  Ghosts,  Ghouls, Greys, Half Mer-men, Humans, Jari-Ka (Mummies), Negator, Reptilians, Vampires, and Were-beasts.  This moves it a little further afield from Chill and into World of Darkness territory. 

Occupations have a random table with how much they make each year.

Classes include Academic, Arcane Thief, C.A.R.E. Field Agent, Exorcist, Medium, Monster Hunter, Mystic, Necromancer, Occultist, Paranormal Investigator, and Void Master. Some of these are from other books, but pay attention to the details as some do feel different.

Character creation follows the same process as other SURVIVE THIS!! games and by extension most Old-School games. Attributes are covered which include the standard six, plus the "Survive" attribute common to all SURVIVE THIS!! games.  

Like the other games in this family, Hit Points start with a 2d6 and increase by 1d6 per level, regardless of class or race.  Combat can be pretty deadly in these games for people used to the hardiness of even Old-School D&D characters.

Character creation, spells (rune tattoos), skills, and Equipment cover the first 140 pages of the book, so a little more than half. 

Rules

Here we get our rules for playing the What Shadows Hide game.   We get an overview of game terms, which is nice really. Rules for Curses, Exorcisms, and Madness are covered. Similar to the rules found in We Die Young. It looks to me like they could be backported to DP&D rather easily. 

There is a fair number of combat rules.  Likely this has come about from the authors' experiences with their other game Vigilante City. 

We also get rules for XP & Leveling Up and Critical tables.

The Setting of What Shadows Hide

This is the real treat of the book. What makes this one different than the others. The world is filled with monsters, aliens, and other threats to well well-being of humankind. It is largely up to the characters (and those like them) to keep the world safe. Here we get into detail about C.A.R.E. and other organizations. We also cover the cults and organizations the characters are most likely to encounter and how to deal with them. 

At the end of the book, there is a section of adventure seeds. There are some monsters here, but they are directly related to the adventures. For more monsters, you will need the second book in this line, the Cthulhu Sourcebook, or grab one of the other Survive This!! books such as the wonderful DARK PLACES & DEMOGORGONS - The Cryptid Manual are an excellent choice. 

There is a bit here that can be found in other Bloat Games' Survive This!! games. But that is fine, because as an author/designer/publisher, you never know what someone's first book is going to be. So I am perfectly happy with seeing the Mystic again for example. Each book/game does add more to the sum total of the Survive This!! experience, so even in a class I know well (hello again Mystic) there is something new and often something a little different.

You can use all the games interchangeably, along with supplements made for the individual lines. 

A quick read through the book at Gary Con 2022 and I knew right away I could use this core book to recreate any Chill or Conspiracy X game I played in. If I wanted to recreate ay Call of Cthulhu game, well for that I would need Book 2 in the series.