Thursday, May 8, 2014

The Manor #6 is out

What happens when +Tim Shorts of Gothridge Manor and The Manor books mixes my witches with Dylan Hartwell's Big Book of Spiders and one of +matt jackson's maps?

You get one creepy ass adventure!

Witches of the Dark Moon is a low level adventure featured in The Manor #6, the latest in the Manor series.

I have not read it all yet, but the adventure looks fun, creepy as all heck and some really awesome takes on my witch class. I love seeing this sort of stuff.   And no worries, if you do not own a copy of The Witch (buy why not!?) you can still use the witches here.

Of course there is more material in this issue than the adventure, but I just got it so it will have to wait for a proper review.

But I can say this.  Go out and get this now!

Wednesday, May 7, 2014

New Basic Witch Spells

A couple of new spells I have been working on for the witch. Designed to be used with The Witch for Basic Era Games but it can certainly be used by other classes such as the Necromancer or Vivimancer.

All spells and names are considered 100% Open in terms of the Open Gaming Licence.

Blood Augury
Level: Vivimancer 1, Witch 1
Range: Caster
Duration: One Question
This spell is a very limited augury where the caster can ask one question and watch how the blood reacts. If the witch uses her own blood the question must be about herself or someone close to her, if it is the blood of another then it can only be about that person.
The question must very specific; “which door should I take?”, “what is the safest way home?” Given the nature of the blood magic the question is usually related to life, death or mortality. The answer is entirely up to the game master.
Note: If a witch or vivimancer uses the blood of a pregnant woman then the answers will always be vague since it involves two lives. The one exception is if the witch asks the gender of the unborn babe.  This will always produce a correct answer.
Material Components: A pewter plate and a drop of blood.

Feel My Pain
Level: Necromancer 1, Vivimancer 1, Witch 1
Range: 50’
Duration: Instantaneous
The witch transfers pain and damage to another target in line of site.  She invokes the spell and either cuts herself or causes damage in some way, such as putting her hand in a torch fire.  She take 1 hp of damage (regardless of how much would have been dealt) and she turns and magnifies that on her target causing 1d6 points of damage.
Material Components: The material components for this spell are the witch's boline or dagger or what ever she uses to cause herself pain.

Share My Pain
Level: Necromancer 2, Vivimancer 2, Witch 2
Range: 25’
Duration: Instantaneous
With this spell the witch can turn damage caused to herself to another.  The witch can cast this spell after any attack that causes her damage and return the same damage to her attacker. Only the one that attacked and damaged the witch can be effected.
Material Components: The witch must have been damaged for at least 1 hp of damage.

Stay Death's Hand
Level: Necromancer 1, Vivimancer 1, Witch 1
Range: 1 Target touched
Duration: 1 round/level
By casting this spell the caster will cause one target touched to stop loosing hit points if they have reached 0 or less.  For the duration of this spell the recipient will not die from their wounds.  This spell does not prevent the target from taking additional damage, say from fire or additional attacks. Nor does this heal damage.
Material Components: A touch and a soothing word.

Vigor
Level: Cleric 1, Witch 1
Range: 1 Target touched
Duration: 1 round/level
This spell allows the caster to temporary increase the Constitution score, with associated hit points, of a single touched creature.  The witch herself will take a temporary loss of 1 point of Constitution and 1d4 hp.
The increase is 2d4 (2-8) and lasts a number of rounds equal to the witch's level.  Hit points lost will be from these temporary hit points first.  When the spell is complete the witch's Constitution returns to its original value but the hit points are lost till healed.
Material Components: The life essence given up by the witch.

Witch's Cradle
Level: Witch 4
Range: One target in line of sight
Duration: 1 round/level
With this spell the witch can cause one target in visual range to have all their senses completely blocked. They cannot hear, speak, feel, smell or see anything for the duration of the spell. If the witch ends the spell, becomes unconscious or is killed then the spell automatically ends.
The spell is similar, but superior to, the Hold Person spell."
Material Components: A bit of string or cord the witch wraps around the fingers of her off-hand.


Section 15
The Witch: A sourcebook for Basic Edition fantasy games, Copyright 2012 Timothy S. Brannan
Magical Theorems & Dark Pacts, Copyright 2013 +Dyson Logos
The Complete Vivimancer, Copyright 2014 Necrotic Gnome Productions and +Gavin Norman
New Basic Witch Spells, Copyright 2014 Timothy S. Brannan

Tuesday, May 6, 2014

Yog The Monster from Space

It's 1975.  I am sitting down to a night of hopefully watching a monster movie on KPLR-TV out of St. Louis. Our baby-sitter for me and my younger sister is my older sister Terri and my older brother Pat*.  (It could have been my other older brother Mike.)

Anyway this movie had been advertised all week and I wanted to see it.  I was already watching Dark Shadows at this point and had seen a Godzilla movie.  Saturday came around and I got to watch a little bit of it; till my older sibs turned it off.  I remembered bits and pieces of it for years, but never knew the title.

A couple years back I asked people on Facebook.  All I could really remember was a giant octopus/squid, tentacles that reached out an grabbed people, and it all took place on an island in the South Pacific.  No luck.  I tried searching in back issues of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. No luck. The biggest problem was I didn't remember enough of the movie to give people enough clues to work on.

Well thanks to my friend Dr. Theda at his eponymous Crypt I was able to piece the last bits of it all together.

The movie that has been bugging me for nearly 40 years is "Yog Monster From Space"!


I bought from a less than reputable website which I have to admit I feel a little bad about.

I got it in the mail last night and popped it in to make sure it worked. It did. It is the movie I remembered. The music and the sound effects were the clincher. The DVD looks like a VHS transfer (complete with "tracking" issues!). The cover was run off on someone's ink jet.

But sure enough this was the movie in question.



Yeah. I paid real money for this.




The way I see it I now have piece of mind. I know what the movie was and now I can finish watching it.
I am like Odysseus at the gates of Ithaca. My long search is over.

So of course what do I actually do last night?  Stayed up and watched Pacific Rim again!

Now I need to add more Kaiju to my games.

Monday, May 5, 2014

A to Z Reflections Post

Once again I survived the April A to Z blog challenge.
This year's theme of Witches was a bit closer to my heart and I had a great time.
Here are my reflections in no particular order.



- Joining up Tasha and Sophie for the Supernatural A to Z mini-hop was one of the best things about this year. They were both great and I got to read a lot of great supernatural themed posts.

- Once again I got to visit some really great blogs and some really great people stopped by mine.  Maybe that is worth it all right there.

- I did get some new followers, which is very nice. Not something I was planning to get to be honest, but I am very happy to have you all.

- I got a lot of great comments from new visitors talking about how my posts helped them in their research or gave them something new to think about.  Likewise there were plenty of posts on other blogs that were helpful to me too.

- My hits were roughly flat.  I know I was getting more traffic from the A to Z thanks to Google Analytics, so there must be a corresponding drop in regular readers.  I find this disappointing to be honest.  After all the material in April is just as good as the material in June with the same amount of posting.
Anyone that doesn't like the A to Z care to chime in?

- I didn't get a chance to go to every site on the challenge this year as I have in years past.

- There are still a number of sites that use CAPTCHA and even set their posts to moderated which is annoying.  A few never bothered to even approve some posts.  I also don't understand blogs that don't allow replies at all. Seems to defeat the entire purpose of a blog really.

I enjoy doing the A to Z Challenge. Next year I would like to do vampires, but also include something that my regular audience can use in a game every day.  But I am going to consider it long an hard before I do.  The joy just wasn't there for me this year.

Saturday, May 3, 2014

Zatannurday: Bloodspell

The Zatanna/Black Canary team up graphic novel Bloodspell is on the way!
DC is gearing up for it too which is great.

http://www.dccomics.com/graphic-novels/black-canary-and-zatanna-bloodspell

Joe Quinones has been posting sketches on his blog for a while.
http://joequinones.blogspot.com/search/label/Bloodspell

According to Amazon it looks like it is going to be hardcover too!  So I am quite excited about this.



Only a few more weeks.

Friday, May 2, 2014

Dungeons.. AND Dragons.

So week end wrap up.

Wow. What a busy week really.

Tonight is 2nd Ed. AD&D, a continuation of our Basic game from two-weeks ago. But I am dead tired.

So here is a size comparison of some Dragons.  Happy Friday!



Thursday, May 1, 2014

All Star RPG Q&A #2

Tonight I am participating in Dan Davenport's All Star RPG Q&A #2.
Check his blog for a list of who is participating,
http://gmshoe.wordpress.com/2014/04/29/all-star-qa-2-lineup/

It will be tonight 7pm to 10pm Central time.
If you want to come by to ask me or anyone else questions then I would love to see you there.
http://tinyurl.com/rpgnet-audience

If you come by I am sure to say something about old school gaming, but I am also going to talk about horror games, Ghosts of Albion and Victorian games in general.

The last one I did was supposed to go for an hour and the questions kept me on for 3 instead!

So come on by!