Lazy Sunday Image Dump

Not much happing today. That is good.  So here are some things that have attracted my attention.

My son has been playing Skyrim since it came out. Well I guess they have a bunch of mods out for it now on the Xbox so he has been playing more.  I told him when I could get a witch hat to let me know.  It came out near the start of the year so this is the character he helped me make.  The "Elder Scrolls" version of Larina.

Not really the most appropriate adventure gear really. This is the "Witch Armor". The tattoos are actually the armor.  I have to admit I like the colors and really dig the pentagrams.   The feathers on the cloak are a nice touch as well.


This image appeared on my Tumblr feed.

http://vintagegeekculture.tumblr.com/post/147818530148/gil-kane

It reminded me I need to do more with my own Astra, the superhero known as "Justice".

After all, she really could be called the Girl of the Future considering her dad is the "Man of Tomorrow".  The history of this character though is something of a mystery. You can read the details here, http://eroticmadscience.com/2017/01/09/tumblr-favorite-2717-the-big-brain-am-winning-again/

I should get my supers game going some more to get Justice some more game time.

Kickstart Your Weekend: Team Synergy & London Gothic

I have a couple of really fun ones for you today!

First up is a Superhero team of cousins called Team Synergy.
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/hbcomics/team-synergy-vol-1-spellbound

From their Press Release:

“Team Synergy” Kickstarter Promises New Heroes For Young Girls
HBComics' super-hero comic on kickstarter is“For every young girl who never had a hero of her own”

HBComics, a boston based indie comic publisher, has launched a kickstarter campagin for “Team Synergy,” a comic about a super-team of teenage girls, aimed at getting young female readers interested in super heroes.

According to the creators, the book was very much inspired by their own daughters and nieces.

“This book is so important to be, because I have two young girls...we have a lot of girls in our family.” said Chris Hebert, in the campaign's video. “(The young girls at comic conventions) would light up when they saw the book. One girl was literally jumping up and down hugging it. She was so excited there was a book just for her.”

The description of the comic on the kickstarter reads: "Five Teenage Girls. All cousins. All super-powered. Trained by their great grandmother, the original super heroine, to be the next generation of heroes. For every young girl who never had a super hero of their own to look up to, this is TEAM SYNERGY!” The book is written by Alan Hebert (Writer of Lazerman) and has art by Scott Shiver (Fem Force) and colors by Chris Hebert.

The kickstarter is running until February 24th, and can be found here: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/hbcomics/team-synergy-vol-1-spellbound

About HBComics™: HBComics™ is an independent comic book publisher, founded by two brothers from Boston. More information on the company, or the titles being produced, can be found at www.hbcomics.com

####

If you'd like more information about this topic, or to schedule an interview, please call Chris Hebert at 781-588-9867 or e-mail info@hbcomics.com

The heroes include team leader Awesome Girl, cheerleader turned superhero Hot Pink, introvert and skeptic punk (and destined to be a new fave here at the Other Side) Scatterbrain, shrinker and anime fan GlitterBug, and finally the hyper social butterfly Pinball. Love these names.  I could see these characters EASY in an Icons game.

Personally, I think it looks awesome and I love finding Kickstarters like this. For me this why Kickstarter was created; to help out independent creators get their creation out to you.

Switching from comic fun to the dark streets of Victorian London.

A London Gothic
Dark Tales of Vampires, Witches, & Demons on the Streets of Victorian London!
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/415194828/a-london-gothic

As I mentioned to the author, Paul Voodindi,  "Vampires, Witches, Demons, London of the Victorian age?  Sounds like my Christmas list!"

From the press release for this:

Paul Voodini welcomes you to the dark and Gothic London of an alternative 1888. A dark and Gothic London where the shadow of Jack the Ripper still hangs over the streets of the East End like a malignant memory, fresh in the mind and with the power still to terrify. It is barely a month since Saucy Jack claimed the life of Mary Jane Kelly, yet, as our heroine Little Nell Trent is about to find out, there are more horrors than just old Jack lurking in the grim backstreets of Whitechapel.

Attacked on her own doorstep by a vampire girl, 18 year old Nell is herself transformed, joining the ranks of the East End vampires, known by the human residents as Tooth Fairies, and is plunged into a world of blood, lust, and dark wonder.

Captured by a human gang and forced into servitude, Nell befriends her one-time assailant Sally, the girl who originally turned her from mortal to vampire, and over the Christmas period of 1888, Sally protects her protégé as best she can, and every night recounts to her a Gothic tale from the dark underbelly of London.
“I had so many stories to tell,” explains Paul, “that I didn't know which one to focus on. So then I thought, why not write them all?!”

Inspired by the classic '1001 Arabian Nights', in which a wife successfully manages to stave off her execution by reciting a tale each night to her king husband, 'A London Gothic' features a series of short stories intertwined within the main narrative. And so, amongst others, we hear of Mary Shelley, who in this reality is a witch intent on raising back to life her dead friend, Amanda Frankenstein; Tiny Tim, the vampire boy, who prophecy tells will lead the vampire girls of London's East End out of the shadows and into the glittering heart of the British capital; and the poor, young funeral worker who on Christmas Eve is possessed by the unquiet spirit of Jacob Marley.

“Yes, these are tales of horror and melodrama,” says Paul, “but they are also tales of love and of loss, and although the anti-heroes of my stories are all creatures of the night, the stories they tell are of being cast adrift in a world that shuns them. I think that's a story that we can all, on one level or another, identify with.”
Find 'A London Gothic' on Kickstarter here: http://kck.st/2kwaq9b

See, sounds like a blast.

More Hero Forge Minis

Got home Monday night to a really nice surprise.  My next batch of Hero Forge minis had arrived.

I opted for the new "Premium Plastic" figures this time.  They were more expensive (which is why it's been two years since I ordered any) but they are really sturdy and nicely detailed.  I picked up two new witches and my son got three for the first time. Two assassins and a dragonborn paladin.

This shot is a bit dark, but this is Skylla and my iconic witch Taryn.

This is Taryn in the premium plastic next to her mother Larina in the nylon plastic (used to be called "strong plastic").
The detail for the premium plastic is night and day difference.

Here is my attempt to make a 28 mm Skylla. Not 100% the same but good enough!

The minis really render nicely from the software.

Once again, just need to get them painted.

My son noticed that these mins are much sturdier than what we get from Wizkids (D&D 5 and Pathfinder) now.  Also if you put a texture on the base they are even sturdier still.

Now I just need to find someone who can paint them for me.

Retro Revival Blog Challenge Week 3: Toys

Today I am joining the Retro Revival Blog Challenge.  Seem like a good fit, they talk about a lot of 80s and so do I.  This is Week 3 and the first one I wanted to chat about.

This week's topic is on Toys.  Now the original post was about favorite toys. But instead, I want to talk about the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons toy line from LJN.

I was never a big collector of these, to be honest.  I had a few figures that I thought were cool, Kalek for example, but that was about it.  My brother had collected some and I bought some myself, but always said they were part of his collection.  I was 13-15 at the time and was not into buying toys anymore.

So a few years back I got the whole collection given back to me by my brother with bits my youngest brother added to it.  I remember buying the Ogre and the Umber Hulk.  The others were new to me.

You can see all I have left of Kalek is his spellbook.  Maybe I'll put that in my witch figure display in my game room.  I really like the ogre and the hook horror.  That hook horror looks like he walked out of my Fiend Folio and I still prefer this look to the "revised" one we get today.

Of course what my son was most psyched about is the Tiamat figure.  She does not have her wings anymore, but he quickly said "she is the god of dragons, she can fly without wings if she wanted to".  Plus he has been coveting my aspect of Tiamat D&D mini for a very long time.  So this is a nice little prize for him.

When I first got these from my brother I thought I would not use them in my games, but recently I have used the Ogre as a proto-Orcus demon and the Troll as Vaprak the Destroyer.

In the adventure, the boys were transported back to the Dawn War where He Who Was was killed by The Destroyer (who will become Demogorgon) and Dis, the god that dies and then becomes the demon Orcus.

I am not sure if finding the other toys in this line is something I want to pursue.  It would not be easy and it would not be cheap.  I hit plenty of swap meets, flea markets, and second-hand-stores though that when I find one, I pick one up.

Of course, no discussion of these toys is complete without mentioning Skylla.
I have taken my obsession with this character to, well, my typical levels of obsession.

She is the evil magic-user/with from the LJN Advanced Dungeons & Dragons toyline and Basic/Expert modules. So there is a lot of reason for me to like her.  So I made witch stats for her for every game I currently play.

• Introduction, base stats
• Spellcraft & Swordplay: Eldrtich Witchery
• Dragon Magazine Issues #5 and #20
• Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea
• Pathfinder
• BECMI + Glantri Gazetteer Witch
• Castles & Crusades
• Adventures Dark & Deep
• Dragon Magazine #114
• The Complete B/X Adventurer
• Dungeons & Dragons, 5th Edition
• Dungeons & Dragons, 4th Edition
• Adventurer Conqueror King & Players Companion
• Fantastic Heroes & Witchery (Occultist)

I even made a Hero Forge mini of her to use in my games now (more on that tomorrow).

There you have it!  There is a great listing and discussion of all these toys at The Toy Archive.


Check out the other posting this week at Retro Revival.

http://retroramblings.com/retro-revival-blog-challenge-week-3-toys/
http://retroramblings.com/retro-revival-blog-challenge/

New Releases Tuesday: Black Box BECMI Supplements

The mid 90s were an odd time of gaming for me. I started out very excited about the new AD&D 2nd Edition game, moved completely over to Ravenloft and in the end had left D&D completely in favor of games like WitchCraft and Mage.   Consequently, I started the 90s as a college kid and ended the 90s a house, a wife, a kid and ABD on my first Ph.D. so I saw a lot of change.

What that all adds up to is that there were a ton of D&D-related releases that I not only didn't experience or play but also never even heard of till much later.   "Black-box BECMI" was one of those.  Again, as I mentioned, I was into AD&D2 pretty hard and then left D&D, so BECMI was not something I paid attention too.  Fast forward to the mid-late 2000s I started to discover these boxed sets.  In some ways they seem so retro; a boxed set with board-game like pieces in a world edging towards glossy (and thick) hardcovers.

At a +Games Plus auction I was able to pick up these,

They are a ridiculous amount of nostalgia and I REALLY want to use them some time as the start of a pure BECMI campaign.

Well today we got two new releases in this line on DriveThruRPG, The Dragon's Den and The Goblin's Lair.

I have no idea how the scans are. The box interiors have quite a lot of pieces.

So it will be interesting to see how they scanned all of this.  At $5 a piece, that is not too bad of a deal really.   The "Black Box" is not available on DriveThru yet, so you will need to use the Rules Cyclopedia for these.

I don't have a campaign in mind for this at all, outside of knowing I want to use Quest for the Silver Sword as the next adventure after these.  I am always a sucker for a haunted house adventure.

Witch & Witchcraft Reading Challenge: Witch: A Tale of Terror

Sam Harris is an author and neuroscientist most often known for his views on atheism and skepticism. Last year I read his book "The End of Faith" and rather enjoyed it. I was very pleased to see this year he had done a reading of selected sections of Charles Mackay's 1841 book Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds. I should add that book next to my reading list.

Harris has a breezy style to his reading, this book is an audio-book only release. I found that there was som much the resonated with today that I had to keep reminding myself that this book was actually published at the dawn of the Victorian-era and not our own.

Listening to this tale is a horror story, no doubts about it. I was trying to mentally keep track of all the people murdered as witches in the name of God or fear that I lost count close to a million. These are not "alternate facts" counts, but court records poured over by Mackay. As they say though, the murder of one is a tragedy the murder of millions is a statistic. So to make sure you don't loose sight of this horror Mackay, through Harris, reminds us that children some as young as 5, 9 and 10 were also burned at the stake because, someone, somewhere thought they might be a witch.

Thankfully, I had spent my summer reading the history of England, so the main players in the "Witch Craze" were well known to me.

I will not lie, the whole delusion has always sickened me and paid no small to my anti-theistic attitudes.

Harris does a great job of narration and in not letting his own point of view override the narrative. If you have ever read or heard his books in the past then his point of view is obvious. He mentions things in the Introduction and that is really it. Personally, I would have liked an Afterward too, but the Introduction covers it all.

2017 Witch & Witchcraft Reading Challenge
Books Read so far: 3
Level: Initiate
Witches in this book: Millions or None
Are they Good Witches or Bad Witches: Too many innocents to count
Best RPG to Emulate it: Not really a good choice here. But I'd love to try some of this under WitchCraft.
Use in WotWQ: I got so many ideas on who the "Big Bad" really is going to be in this.
https://www.samharris.org/books/witch

Lazy Sunday: S&W Witch Edition

This morning I am sitting here, drinking my coffee, reflecting on the amazing women's marches around the world.

I am also working on my next "OSR" project, the Swords & Wizardry Witch.  I have loads of text, I just need to make sure it all works with the feel of S&W.

Today, I got my first bit of official art in the mail.  Here is my iconic witch, Larina, and her winged cat familiar.

This art is from +Mona Dowie.  We found each other after she did some work on Petty Gods.
She did the art for my characters Nox and Syla.

I love this. I like that she is sitting there watching the moon while her cat is asleep on her cloak. Her familiar is sleeping because according to Mona, "Supernatural or not, they're all lazy little fuzzballs sometimes."

This is going to be a lot of fun.