Monday, October 31, 2011

Spellcraft & Swordplay: The Necromancer

The Necromancer

One of the most oft created sub class, new class or alternate class is the Necromancer.
Gamers in good campaigns look to them as the penultimate foe. Gamers in evil campaigns dream of controlling scores of undead.

The Monstrous Mayhem book for Spellcraft & Swordplay introduced the Necromancer Elite Path.  He is also featured in the Deluxe Core Rule book.

The Necromancer
Level 8
HD: 6+4 (36 hp)
Attacks: 5+3 (Staff, spells)
S: 10 D: 12: Con: 13 Int: 18 Wis: 16 Cha: 13
Bane of the Dead, Enhanced Undead, Skeletal Minion, Undead Apotheosis: +3
Spells:
First Level: Bane, Chill Ray, Detect Evil, Inflict Light Wounds
Second Level: Cause Fear, Death Knell, Hold Person, Protection from Good
Third Level: Curse, Speak with Dead, Unholy Blight
Fourth Level: Death Ward, Vampiric Killer
Fifth Level: Shadow Armor

The Necromancer prowls the night looking for crypts to raid or fresh corpses to use in his unholy experiments of the dead.

He is armed with a Skull Staff that gives him a +1 on his spellcasting rolls.

October Challenge: Spielberg Film Fest


Steven Spielberg is one of the best, if not the best director of the modern age. Say what you like about some of his movies, there is no doubt that he can do horror and suspense. I decided to end my October Horror Challenge with some really, really good movies. So this weekend I did some ones I have seen before.
There is different kind of horror here, and I'll go as far as to say was invented by Spielberg; the Suburban Horror film.  Look at his movies, Close Encounters, Poltergeist, and ET. He took something so innocuous and innocent made it the stage for aliens and ghosts.

Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977)
The movie that made Spielberg a household name.  If you ever read "The Demon Haunted World" by Carl Sagan he points out that while reports of ghosts, demons and angels have declined, reports of of alien abductions have risen.  Close Encounters captures this like no other film.  Here the aliens end up being benevolent there is no indication in the film till the end that this has to be the case.

Richard Dreyfus' descent into madness is key to this movie; the fear, uncertainty and doubt. We even have a final girl, in the form of Dreyfus.
I chose this movie because I had just picked it up on Blu-Ray and it holds up really, really well.  Even the bits that are dated seem fine and there is not a lot of those.  This movie could be released today and have just as much impact.
Though I wonder if these days the aliens might appear different, or if the inside of the spaceship might change.  Between this movie and now there is a whole lot of "Alien" culture that has happened.

Tally, 28 movies, 24 new


Poltergeist (1982)
While watching all the haunted house movies at the start of this challenge I kept thinking back to Poltergeist as the best haunted house movie ever. So I re-watched it over the weekend.  Man does it hold up really, really well. The pacing of the movie is perfect, the characters are interesting and the scares are top notch.  It is everything promised in CEot3K and more.  The family setting is perfect really, better than that of Close Encounters. While the events in CE destroy the family, the events in Poltergeist bring them together. One of the iconic scenes is Jobeth Williams kissing Craig T. Nelson in front of the closet before she goes in.  It works so well because Speilberg wrote the screenplay and he got a horror director, Tobe Hooper, to do the directing.  Everything you would want in a horror movie is here, save for gore and nudity.  But hey, the suspense and atmosphere of this film more than makes up for any perceived lacking.  In fact I'll set any scene of buckets of blood up against Carol Anne talking to the "TV People" and having a conversation with them where she tells them all sorts of things like her age. The movie really is a masterpiece.

And let us not forget the "Poltergeist Curse".

Tally, 29 movies, 24 new

Jaws (1975)
There are only a handful of movies that have ever scared me a on a deep, primal level.  The Exorcist is one and Jaws is another.  I am not alone in this.  Jaws has so deeply influenced our pop culture that people will regularly throw out "We'er gonna need a bigger boat.", watch "Shark week" on Discovery Channel and then there is the music.  The score of Jaws competes with the score of the Exorcist as the most easily recognized horror movie score.  Even the mere start of the "duh-dum, duh-dum, dum, dum oh wee-ooo!" and people know it.  Even if they have never seen the movie.  Again we take something familiar and safe, a day out on the beach, and turn it into a literal blood bath.
Like the first two this film is very nearly perfect in every respect.  Ok, so, some the things the shark does are a bit much, but it is still a shark and not a ghost or alien.
Roy Scheider, like Craig T. Nelson and Dreyfus of a later film, has tyified the role of the "Speilberg Dad". A role, oddly enough, missing from his Magnum Opus, E.T.  The Speilberg Dad though is strong, loves his family and is ready to do battle with the monsters, even if he has no idea what he is doing at all.  Dreyfus in CE is the dad that fails, but Scheider here and Nelson in Poltergeist are cut from the same cloth.
Like Poltergeist lets pretend the sequels don't exist ok?

Tally, 30 movies, 24 new

Jurassic Park (1993)
Jurassic Park combines everything from the previous movies into a new experience.  This is an age old tale of science and man's hubris gone wrong. Filled with the cutting edge tech of the day and all the right buzz words and pop-cultural refs, Jurassic Park could have been a much lesser movie in the hands of anyone else.  But instead we get Micheal Crichton's book as viewed through the eyes of Speilberg.   I mean even look at that movie poster, very subtle in the same ways that the Jaws one is.

In this movie we treated to breath taking views and wonders. Then the "screaming and blood" starts.
So much of this movie is right that it is easy to ignore what it gets wrong (those are Velociraptors, it should be called Cretaceous Park...), but none of that matters when there is a T-Rex chasing after you.

I can remember back in college my wife (then my girlfriend) had just finished reading this book and she was going on and on about how great of a movie it would make.  She was right.

Tally 31 movies, 24 new.

That is the final review for this Challenge!
I watched more new movies this year than last year and that was my personal goal.

More Spellcraft & Swordplay love

A couple more good posts on Spellcraft and Swordplay this fine Halloween morning.

A new post at newer blog (for me anyway), Adventures and Shopping.
http://adventuresandshopping.blogspot.com/2011/10/classic-old-school-rpg-spellcraft.html

And a mini-review from Tenkar's Tavern,
http://www.tenkarstavern.com/2011/10/mini-review-spellcraft-swordplay.html

Looking forward to seeing more.

Sunday, October 30, 2011

Going back to School with Spellcraft & Swordplay

I was over at my regular DM's house this weekend helping get his new router up and running.  He mentioned that he wants a new fantasy game to run at the high school.  He is a high school football coach and he runs the D&D group.

I had just gotten a couple of copies of the Spellcraft & Swordplay core rules from Drivethru's Print on Demand service and I gave him a copy to try out.  Well he came back to me says he going to give it a try with his group.



You can read his blog here, http://rhoninsramblings.blogspot.com/2011/10/kids-in-agc-have-requested-fantasy-game.html, and check on his group's progress.

I am glad to see this game getting some more love!


OSR Publisher's List, Graphical Guide

There is a rather impressive list of many of the Old School products over at Dargon's Foot.

http://www.dragonsfoot.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=48&t=51024

I suggest having a look!

Saturday, October 29, 2011

October Challenge: Alone in the Dark (2005)


I really, really should know better. But I saw some names, and thought maybe, just maybe.
But no.  I got Boll'ed again.

Alone in the Dark (2005)
Well it had Christian Slater as a poor man's Nick Cage.  And some cool looking monsters, but I am thinking they are more from the video game than the mind of Boll.
The movie starts out good enough.  Ancient Native American artifacts.  Monsters that come from a world of darkness.  Shadowy government agency.  All the things you need for a cool movie.
The build up of combining the artifacts and half-human sleeper agents is also very cool.
In right up to the final battle at the gold mine everything was ok.  Slow, but ok.
Then the story just falls apart.  Christian Slater's rogue, neer-do-well character is brought back into the fold of the Government organization and then it all goes to crap.
We never learn why the bad guy was doing what he wanted to do, why some of the creatures were out but not all of them.  Why Slater's character's implant was "dead".  Why Tara Reid still gets work when she can't act for a damn.
These are questions that Uwe Boll will never answer for us.

The monsters were really cool though and that is something.

Tally 27 movies, 24 new.

Game ideas:  I should stat up the xenos (hate that name) but maybe I'll just take some of their powers for an advanced Displacer Beast like monster.

Zatannurday: Halloween

Is it any surprise I love Halloween?  How about when Halloween and witch costumes get together?  Or Zatanna ones?  Well that is better than Christmas in my mind.

Here is a great Zatanna Halloween costume.



She is just missing a hat!  Found anyplace that sells costumes.

And another one found here,



Happy Halloween everyone!!