How Dungeons & Dragons Became A Game Changer

I am moving offices today and don't really have time for a full on post.

But this came across my newsfeed today and I thought I would share it.

http://artery.wbur.org/2014/11/24/dungeons-dragons

Very interesting read.

What Makes a Good Adventure?

I have been asking around various places and now I want to bring it home.

What makes a good adventure?

Here is my problem. I want to make a new adventure for complete newbie DMs and Players.  I know there are several out there that do this, but I would like one I can print out and give away along with a set of rules.  Likely OSR, but a good adventure should be easy to adapt.

I want something that also takes on some of the tropes of the game.  I am perfectly happy to have the "you all meet in the tavern/inn" starting IF that is a good thing to do for this adventure.

Personally I like a nice mix of puzzles, combat, mysteries to solve and role-playing opportunity.

Looking at the classics, B2 has a great set up, B1 gives you freedom and B3 covers the mystery and puzzles.

Really we don't need another low-level adventure, so if there is one out there that you really like let me know about it and let me know why you like it.

Zatannurday: The Cave of Cool Collection

No one quite loves his supergirls as much as my friend Cal over at Calvin's Canadian Cave of Cool.

So I figured on this cold day I would send him some visitors (that would be you) to admire his collection of pics.

http://calvinscanadiancaveofcool.blogspot.com/2014/11/z-is-for-zatanna.html
http://calvinscanadiancaveofcool.blogspot.com/2014/10/saturdays-with-supergirls-zatanna.html
http://calvinscanadiancaveofcool.blogspot.com/2014/09/zatanna-1964-by-ruiz-burgos.html
http://calvinscanadiancaveofcool.blogspot.com/2014/07/clearing-out-zatanna-file-too.html
http://calvinscanadiancaveofcool.blogspot.com/2013/09/sundays-with-supergirl-zatanna.html
http://calvinscanadiancaveofcool.blogspot.com/2011/10/i-do-loves-me-some-zatanna.html
http://calvinscanadiancaveofcool.blogspot.com/2010/06/pin-up-art.html
http://calvinscanadiancaveofcool.blogspot.com/2010/05/dan-brereton-zatanna.html
http://calvinscanadiancaveofcool.blogspot.com/2010/05/magic-girl.html
http://calvinscanadiancaveofcool.blogspot.com/2013/11/zantana-cosplay-by-krystle-starr.html

I am sure there are more, but Cal posts many times a day, so it is easy to miss something in his nearly 28,000 posts.  For the record that is over 10x the output of this humble blogger.

Zee outside of the Cave of Cool.  Location only know to select heroes.

He has a fantastic collection of action figures too. If you are a collector then they are worth a look.
http://calvinscanadiancaveofcool.blogspot.com/search?q=toybox

So pop on by, say hi. Leave a comment or two on his posts.  Cal's a good guy.

Kickstart Your Weekend: Jim Balent & Holly G's Crossover: When Magick Meets Manga !

I will freely and happily admit I am a fan of the Tarot Comics from Jim Balent.
I am also a big fan of Holly Golightly's "School Bites" webcomic.

In fact I have featured their characters here a number of times over the years for a variety of systems.

Tarot Witch of the Black Rose

• Mutants and Masterminds, 2^nd Edition
• Mutants and Masterminds, 3^rd Edition
• True20
• Cinematic Unisystem
• Superbabes

Cherri Creeper, Witch Girls Adventures.

But I have never brought them together.

Well Jim and Holly are going to do that now in a new crossover comic book.
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/jimbalent/jim-balent-and-holly-gs-crossover-when-magick-meet

The art is going to come in a variety styles.
So we will see Tarot, Raven and Boo in "School Bites" quasi-Manga style and the girls of School Bites drawn in Jim Balent's hyper-realism style.

Of course it could be fun just to see Tarot and Cherri on the same page since both characters seem to be modeled on Jim's wife Holly.

But honestly I am most excited to see "Annie Mia" the vampire turned Dark Angel from School Bites.

I know Jim and Holly are not everyone's tastes, but the comics are fun and they are both great people and this comic promises to be a blast.  So check it out!

Lindsey Stirling - Dragon Age / Occult Violinist

If your Bard is not as cool as this then you are playing her wrong.



I will admit I am a fan of this little pixie.

Of course with the right tinkering in Ghosts of Albion you take the Occult Poet and make an Occult Violinist.

Owl & Weasel Wednesday #18 September 1976

We take  big jump to September now. No I am not missing July and August, with Ian and Steve havig their wild adventure in the States this is the first issue we get since then.

Steve takes over the editorial in this issue to talk about their US trip. They visited TSR at Gen Con (more on that later) and generally took in the sites of the American side of the gaming hobby.  I found it interesting that they thought the America hobby stores were similar enough to London's.   I guess the differences were not as great as I expected either.  They loved Baseball and Frisbee (it was the 70s remember) and brought some home with them.

Reviewed this issue is the Lankhmr boxed game from TSR.   The whole Lankhmar stories and games are really something of a mystery to me.  I have not read the books nor played any of the games. This one sounds like an interesting game, but I wonder if it is more due to my romanticizing the time and subject matter.

Ia posts his take on their American trip They got to meet Gary, Fritz Leiber and the young Miss Wisconsin.   Tim Kask gets name dropped here as well.  Interestingly enough the report is very much like any Gen Con report you have ever read.  Coming from two such notables in the hobby though at their first Gen Con does make you smile.  Everyone has their first con sometime.

The first of the article competition is up from Andy Evans.  His article is about Reality in Fantasy.  It is the first in what will become many articles, Usenet posts, forum posts and blogs about how to build and deal with reality into your D&D game.  Andy here just happens to be one of the first.  Among the things he gets right is future of RPGs (namely they have one) and the flexibility. You can do anything in them and with them.  So he has quite a lot of good insight there.  

A brief article on the next two and last D&D supplements.  "Gods, Demi-Gods and Heroes" and "Swords and Spells".   There will be more on these in future issues, but "Swords & Spells" is really something of a semi-supplement.  Soon we will be entering my generation of D&D.

There is something else the guys picked up in the States.  Skateboarding. They devote and entire page to it in fact.  No need for commentary here from me.

Zine review is  very interesting for one thing in particular.  It discusses the last issue of The Strategic Reveiw (Vol. II No. 2) and the first issue of The Dragon. "Little Wars" is also discussed as the wargame alternate to The Dragon and the successor to SR.   Full price is £1 which makes it "expensive".  Subscribers to SR can convert their subscriptions over to The Dragon.

In this issue I can see why White Dwarf was every other month vs. monthly at first.  Things were still moving kind of slow back then.  Granted we see the same amount (or more) content in blogs and message boards in a day, but we have Internet speed and nearly 40 years of game development to talk about.  That all being said this issue benefited from the short break.  Ian & Steve seemed energized and ready to go and new games were being talked about.  To day this is the most "RPG"-centric OWl & Weasel to date.

Mystara 3001: A Wild Space Odyssey (PWWO: Calidar + Star Wars + d20)

Over the weekend I spent some time cleaning.  I was going through a bunch of "old" d20 books from the dawn of the d20 boom.  I have Dragonstar which I loved in theory but not exactly in practice.  I have d20 Star Wars, which I also enjoyed but I am not totally up on all the Star Wars lore by any stretch of the imagination. I also have d20 Future which gives me all the cool Star Frontiers races I really enjoyed.

I was looking at this stack and thinking that really, I have everything I need for a kick-ass Space Opera game.  Plus in my mind Star Wars and D&D are inextricably linked together.  Not just in terms when they both hit my consciousness but also in feel.   I have often said that the best "D&D movie" ever was Star Wars (A New Hope for the younger fans).

I figure I could also grab some ideas from Gamma World and even Spelljammer.

But what I have been lacking is a way to bring them all together.

Then +Bruce Heard's Calidar came into my life.

 

I have spoken about Calidar in detail already.  The crunch is Pathfinder, which is d20 really.  So mixing it with d20 Future and d20 Star Wars is really a no brainer.

Calidar helped me smooth out some of the rough spots in my ideas.  It also gave me backgrounds and character to use.  Plus Calidar is a more solid hook for "D&D in Space" than Star Wars was.  I don't want to play a Star Wars game, but I do want to play with some of the toys in the game universe.

Space ships could be a combination of Magic-craft  or technology (not sure which yet). I would include all the planets from Calidar, but I could also take a page or two from Spelljammer and Star Wars.  Maybe not exact planets from Star Wars, but if this is going to be space opera then there has to be a "Dune" like planet there somewhere.  Or even a Dune/Tatooine/Athas composite.  But not make it a central location.

In fact to steal another page from Dune I think I need to do something to make extra special about Calidar.  In the game now Calidar is where you start and venture out.  I think I will have Calidar the destination instead.  The characters leave their home world. Likely Mystoerth and then the come here.  If I am using the Mystara Calendar then the Gazeteers were all published in or around 1015 AC.  I would make this 3000 AC. Or 3001 just to be that way.

It might seem odd to want to go back to 3rd Edition, but honestly I think it would be a blast.  The multi-classes, the Prestige classes, all of it would work great here.

I could also steal heavily from Doctor Who, Star Trek and even the 80s Buck Rogers and have a "Draconian Empire" that would be my Klingon analogues. Use Dragonborn naturally.  In many ways I guess it would by my Mystoerth world writ-large.

Yeah. The Allied Human worlds (Oerth, Mystara, Krynn and Toril) discover the new world of Calidar, which is rich in some resource.  They get there only to meet a counter claim from the Draconic Empire.  Already there are colonies of Dwarves and Elves, stationed on the moons, and an indigenous population.  This could be a lot of fun.  Plus it would give me my sci-fi kick I have been wanting for so long.