Saturday, May 22, 2021

Sword & Sorcery & Cinema: Forbidden World (1982)

Forbidden World
More Roger Corman fun! This one is a repeat from an October Horror Movie Marathon from 2018.

If I had thought about it I should have done this as a double feature with last week's Galaxy of Terror.  I think a lot of the starship interiors were reused. The movie starts with some starships attacking another ship. A robot (straight out of Star Frontiers by the look of him) wakes up the commander out of cryosleep to deal with them.   After the battle, we learn that the captain, Mike Colby played by Jesse Vint, has been asleep so long his son is older than he is now.  Also, he has been re-routed to the planet Xarbia which Colby thinks is a joke.  It is an experimental research station and something got loose. Something they call Subject 20. June Chadwick stars as Dr. Barbara Glaser, who is best known from V and This is Spinal Tap. Dawn Dunlap also stars as Tracy Baxter.  Dunlap is better known as "Laura" from the quasi-erotic film of the same name when she was only 16 and from Corman's Barbarian Queen

Another Corman recycle are the two suns rising on the planet. Same shot is used in The Warrior and the Sorceress.  Wonder if it is the same planet? What happened to it I wonder. I was already running low on water in David Cardine's time.  Maybe it died out leaving only the Proto B bacteria the scientists are studying. 

So we have a mutant monster in a lab out in space.  What can go wrong?  Well, I sure you can guess.  The movie is not great, but it is also not really terrible. Like a lot of Corman's stuff, there is a core here, a kernel of a really good idea here.  This movie very, very effectively combines "Alien" and "The Thing" into one movie and puts the whole thing on a station in space.   It is Corman, so yeah the women take off their clothes at the drop of a hat. They also run around in high heels and shower together. The future is weird. 

The movie is fairly uneven, going from the tension of the escaped mutant in one scene to everyone turning in for the night in the next. 

The monster picks people off one by one, you know like a monster will. Until we are just left with just Tracy and Mike.  Though the idea of feeding the monster a cancerous tumor to kill it is a novel one. 

It was a fun flick, but I got really tired of Tracy's screaming in the last half of the flick. 

Gaming Content

Same as you get from Alien or The Thing.  Hunt the monster before it hunts you. I suppose that I will have to do a "monster is loose in a research facility" adventure at some point.  But I would need to make it different than either "Ghost Ship" or the "Ghost Station of Inverness V." This would have to be a flesh and blood abomination. NOT just an alien, but a creature of humankind's hubris.

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Tim Knight of Hero Press and Pun Isaac of Halls of the Nephilim along with myself are getting together at the Facebook Group I'd Rather Be Killing Monsters to discuss these movies.  Follow along with the hashtag #IdRatherBeWatchingMonsters.

Friday, May 21, 2021

Mail Call: Holmes for the Weekend

Scratch a Holy Grail item or two off my list!  A couple of impulse purchases made this week were delivered together today.  Which means only one thing!  Holmes Basic this weekend!

Holmes and Holmage Boxed sets

So why do I need another Holmes Boxed Set? Well, I don't but this one is much nicer shape than my others and it had some surprises inside.

Holmes Boxed set

In addition to the chits, it had one of my Holy Grail items, a set of Dragon Dice "random number generators" with the card.  I have wanted one of these for years!  Yeah, it's damaged but that is fine with me. It honestly looks like one I had bought at White Oaks Mall in Springfield IL circa 1983.

like new adventures

It also included a copy of B2 Keep on the Borderlands (I have several, this is the first with the Wizard logo) and a much better copy of T1 than what I had.  But that is not all.

Dragon Dice!Gateway to Adventure!

I also got a copy of the Holmes Gateway to Adventure! Yeah, it is not much, but I didn't have a copy yet.

Gateway to Adventure!

Gateway to Adventure!

Gateway to Adventure!

Gateway to Adventure!

I love looking at this old collection of games and thinking back to that time.

This would have been a treat in and of itself.  But I also got some NEW dice to go with my old dice.

These are the Zucati "Holamge" dice sets.

Zucati Holmage Dice

Zucati Holmage Dice

Zucati Holmage Dice Boxed Set

Zucati Holmage Dice Boxed SetZucati Holmage Dice Boxed Set

Zucati Holmage Dice Boxed SetZucati Holmage Dice Boxed Set

In addition to dice and crayons, there are character sheets, maps, and an artist's spotlight!

The dice are great and compare well to the GaryCon dice I got a couple years back.

Zucati Holmage and GaryCon Dice

I even have my d12 from the era.  Sadly the only one I still have.

Zucati Holmage and GaryCon Dice

The d20 is numbered 1-20 rather than 0-9 twice, but the crayons can turn a normal d20 into a d% easy.

Comparing my Holmes sets I think I can keep two and sell off one.

Holmes Boxed Set

Holmes Boxed Set

Which is a good idea since I need to recoup some cash here.

The dice though now allow me to have a set with all my "Basic" sets.

Basic sets

My Moldvay Basic has the most complete set I can find of my original dice.  Holmes and Mentzer Basic get some uninked sets with a crayon.  My expert set came with orange dice originally. I traded them for something else and then got a set of blue Dragon Dice just like these for my Expert.  Oddly enough I do have that set of dice still.  They were always my goto set even in the AD&D 2nd Ed age.

Dragon Dice!

I think I can finally say that after all these years I have rebuilt my Basic D&D collection after it was lost so many decades ago.

The Holmes set also came with these dice.  They are all d8s but the numbering is strange to me.  No idea what they are for. I am sure some here knows.

Mystery d8s


Thursday, May 20, 2021

Review: Spelljammer, AD&D Adventures in Space

Cover of the Spelljammer book
Come back to me if you will to a time just right before the Internet.
(Ok, technically the roots of the Internet were here in ARPANet and what I was using BitNet at the time. But you know what I mean.)  

The time is 1989 and the game on my table is AD&D 2nd Edition.  Well, it is really Ravenloft, because, in college that was my setting of choice, AD&D just happens to be the system that ran underneath it all.  So a couple of points already.  I was playing AD&D 2nd Ed and really all I had the money for at the time was for one setting and that was Ravenloft.  There were a lot of great settings in the AD&D 2 days; Forgotten Realms loomed large and impressive, and maybe a little intimidating.  Greyhawk and Mystara only had some minor entries, much to my disappointment, Al-Qadim and Kara-Tur both looked like fun, and then we would also get Planescape. But there was one out that seemed so strange to me that I wanted to know more but yet could not bring myself to buy.  Until now. 

DriveThruRPGs Print on Demand has been a fantastic opportunity for those of us who want to go back and look at some of these other systems and games of our youth.  While I have relied mostly on the aftermarket to get myself up to speed on the Forgotten Realms (and enjoying it) I recently picked up the hardcover POD version of AD&D's Spelljammer.  And I am so happy I did.

Now don't get me wrong. I wanted to play SpellJammer back then.  We ever started a new campaign where all the characters were in a navy, so they all had 3 free levels in fighter, and then they were level 1 (or 4 for the fighters) in whatever other classes they were going to be.  Using the AD&D dual classing rules meant they could not act as fighters until later. But it boosted their HP.  They were going to spend some time at sea, but eventually, they were going to turn their ship into a SpellJamming one.  I named the ship "The Black Betty" after the Ram Jam song because every time I heard "Spelljammer" I thought "ram jam" and the Black Betty was a good name for a ship.  Sadly we never got very far. I was at University and my DM at the time was at a different school and the other players were also at yet another school. Meeting only over the summer was not helpful for a long-term campaign.

Fast forward to today.

Spelljammer: Adventures in Space

For this review, I am considering the Print on Demand hardcover and the PDFs from DriveThruRPG.  There may be things true of these versions that are not true for the original boxed set and things that might be the other way around.  I can't speak to the boxed set since I never owned it.  

Spelljammer is a whopping 278 pages.  Jeff Grubb is our primary author with art by Jeff Easley, Jim Holloway, Dave "Diesel" LaForce, and Roy Parker.  Easley is responsible for our cover, and indeed many of the covers from this time.  The interior art is Jim Holloway who really set the tone and feel for what I consider the 2nd Ed "style" of that time.  The interior is largely black and white with some color illustrations.  Mostly the pictures of ships, what were covers in the separate boxed set books, and some maps.  The scanned pages are not crisp, but they are easy to read.

The book is divided into two large sections that correspond to the two 96-page books that came in the boxed set, Lorebook of the Void and Concordance of Arcane Space.

Lorebook of the Void

We are introduced to how Spelljammer, AD&D in Space, came about.  We also now know that this was the first of new boxed set settings to come out for AD&D 2nd ed.  More would follow and make 2nd Ed more famous for their settings rather than their rules.  The goal for Spelljammer was overtly a simple one; AD&D in space, connect all the main AD&D worlds, and make them work together without changing what makes each one unique.

This section covers the basics of Spelljamming and operating a spelljamming helm.  We get a good overview of the types of spelljamming ships and that various races that can be found in Arcane Space.  We learn that gnomes and halflings for the most part avoid Arcane Space since they are too closely tied to their planets (makes sense) but Krynn's Tinker Gnomes are not so tied to their world in the same fashion so they are very much at home in Arcane Space. We even get a bit on goblinoids.  

The next third covers the various monsters and creatures you will find in AD&D 2nd Ed Monstrous Compendium format. We are given new details on the Beholders (they take the place of Daleks in Arcane Space) and the Neogi. Mind Flayers also get new treatments.  

The last thrid covers the three main AD&D game worlds, Krynn (Dragonlance), Oerth (World of Greyhawk), and Toril (Forgotten Realms).  The problems begin to show here since the cosmology of Krynn is tied very much to their gods.  This is not the fault of Spelljammer or Dragonlance, but rather one of trying to fit the divine into a scientific worldview.  I will admit I do like how the spheres are covered here.  It reminds me a little of how the solar system of Urt is covered in the D&D Immortals Set.  One could take that information and drop it rather cleanly into this book.  It was not done of course because at this time Urt/Mystara was considered part of D&D and not AD&D.  Even discussions online close to the time described AD&D as one universe, maybe even in the same galaxy, and D&D in a different universe altogether. 

Concordance of Arcane Space

The second major section of the book covers the rules part of Arcane Space.  The first chapter describes some basics of how Arcane Space and the Phlogiston work.  Chapter 2 covers some changes to the AD&D rules.  The first change, Lizard Men are now a playable race.  There are changes to some spells and how clerics can talk to their gods. We also get some new spells.  Chapter 3 covers the ships. How they are made, flown, and the capabilities (armor, weapons, storage) of examples.  Combat is covered in Chapter 4.  Ships are a lot like characters in they have an Armor Rating and Hull Points.  Damage by large ship weapons can deal hull damage and/or hit point damage. Chapter 5 covers celestial mechanics, or how systems are made. While in real-life astrophysics we know that forces like gravity will produce round (or oblate) planets and stars, there is a wide variety of things found even nearby to us.  Arcane Space should be just as diverse if not more so.  Oerth (Greyhawk) is a Geocentric system, Toril and Krynn are heliocentric. There are other systems that can be and should be, even stranger.  We learn that there is a flow to the Phlogiston and that some worlds might easy to travel to, but harder to travel away from.

We also have several appendices.  The first covers how magic spells and items work in space.  Appendix 2 covers travel times with Earth and the Solar System as an example along with Krynn, Toril, and Oerth.  Mystara/Urt can be substituted for Earth easy enough.  Flow can affect travel times.

The last section of the book are the color deck plans of various spelljamming ships. Maps and cut-out-and-fold ship minis. Best get the PDF along with the printed book so you can print these on your own.  A large black-hex map would work great for movement in space. 

Reading it today I can overlook some of the flaws that would have bothered me in 1990.  

Print on Demand Book

The Print on Demand book is hardcover, mostly black & white with some color art inside and color covers. It is a hefty volume on premium paper which makes it a little thicker than you expect a 278-page book to be.  It is very high quality. 

Covers of the Spelljammer bookCovers of the Spelljammer book


Interior of the Spelljammer book


Interior of the Spelljammer book

Interior of the Spelljammer book

Interior of the Spelljammer book

Interior of the Spelljammer book

Converting to 5e

In the first chapter of the first section, some advice is given about converting older AD&D monsters to use with Spelljammer since in theory every monster could be found somewhere.  The example given is the Grimlock from the Fiend Folio, a monster they describe as not likely to be updated to 2nd Edition.

Well. We know now the Grimlock. And updated to 3rd and beyond.   So there is no good reason to assume that Spelljammer will "Never" be updated.  In fact with D&D 5's desire to embrace the past and every world of D&D in their products it is reasonable we will see some Spelljammer at some point.  A spelljamming ship was already placed on a level in a 5th edition adventure. 

But converting to 5e based on the material in this book? Well really there are two main areas of focus; monsters and magic.  Many of the monsters have newer 5e writeups now, so this is less a question of conversion and more of replacement.  Magic, in particular spells, would need some more work but the guidelines are in place.  Similar spells should change in similar manners.  Combat can be swapped out for 5e combat, which not terribly different. So yes, if you are playing a 5e game then you can get a lot of use and play out of this book.

If you have ever been curious about Spelljammer but did not want to pay the aftermarket prices then the PDF is an absolute steal.  If you know about it and want to give it a go again (or for the first time) then the POD version is equally cost-effective.

Wednesday, May 19, 2021

Old-School Essentials 3rd Party Publishers


A new bundle of Old-School Essentials products has been released by Planar Compass and is now available on DriveThruRPG. 

Old-School Essentials 3rd Party Publishers by Planar Compass

It has some rather nice products included.

Here are a few of them.

BX Options: Class Builder

Build or customize your own OSE or Basic-era classes. I covered this book a bit ago. 

Hidden Hand of the Horla - T:1
From Appendix N Entertainment

A nice old-school-style adventure where you seek out the tower of the Hand Mage that has reappeared out of legend. It is from R. J. Thompson and is for characters levels 1 to 3.  There are some great new monsters here, the Goatfolk are my favorite, and some new to BX/OSE spells that Advanced players will recognize.  27 pages with maps by Dyson Logos. It is a really fun adventure and captures the spirit of the modules of the early 80s very, very well.  Buy it for the nostalgia, but run it because it is a great little adventure. 

The Chaos Gods Come to Meatlandia
From Knight Owl Publishing

I thought this was an adventure, but it is actually a mini-setting of Meatlandia and the opposing factions. There are meat mages (you really have to buy this to see them) and various types of bards (three in total).  So new classes, new magic (15 pages of meat mage spells), a city, new monsters, new magic items, and just some gonzo-level weirdness.  I have to say that it is not for everyone, BUT there is an audience that will absolutely love this.  Has a solid Dungeon Crawl Classic meets Lamentations of the Flame Princes meets 80s weird horror.  If it were a movie Roger Corman would have been the director or producer and Tom Savini would have starred and consulted on the monster effects. The whole thing is 90 pages long so you are getting a lot.  Not sure where I am going to use it, but it really begs to be used somewhere.  Retooled just a tiny bit could turn it from gonzo to some serious horror. That is the direction I am likely to go.

Barrow Keep: Den of Spies
From R. Rook Games

For starters, you get this product for OSE, 5e, Troika!, and Sharp Swords & Sinister Spells all in the same purchase! So kudos to the authors for that.  The main book covers the keep and a host of important NPCs. The characters are all assumed to be young adults living within the Keep. This covers 72 pages. There are also some new monsters in abbreviated stats that can easily be used by any game.  

The GM's Scenario packs vary from ruleset to ruleset.  5e is 43 pages and OSE is 55 pages.  As expected these GM packs give you scenario seeds, the relevant players/NPCs, and has you go from there.  The flexibility of this a crazy high. I can see an enterprising GM make this their central focus for dozens of adventures if not an entire campaign. If you don't want to do that then make it a home base for the PCs and have the occasional "stay at home" adventure.  Given how well it is multi-stated use it as a means of moving from one game system to the next.  It is extremely well designed.

Get it for one system, but enjoy it with the other three as well.  This has made me want to look more into the Troika! RPG.

FULL DISCLOSURE: The author of this, Richard Ruane, is a co-worker and friend of mine, though I did not see that at the time I purchased this.

I should stat up an NPC Pagan witch that lives in Barrow Keep.

A Witch's Desire - Adventure for Old-School Essentials
From Earl of Fife Games

This is a fun adventure dealing with a bargain made by your village and the local Witch of the Wild.  She is protecting your village from the deadly winter of the Ice Queen.  Now she is asking you for a favor.  Great notes on surviving cold weather and exploring in the wilderness. Part hex crawl-ish, part quest adventure.  The notes say to make her an 8th level magic-user. I say why not an 8th level witch?

Witch of the Wild
8th level Human Witch, Pagan Tradition

Str: 10
Int: 17
Wis: 16
Dex: 11
Con: 13
Cha: 18

HP: 25
AC: 9
THAC0: 18

Saves
D: 10 W: 12 P: 11 B: 14 S: 13

Occult Powers
Familiar: Crow
Cowan: Meepa the Goblin
Herbal healing
Of the Land

Spells
First: (3) Call Spirits of the Land, Cure Light Wounds, Glamour
Second: (3) Animal Messenger, Pins and Needles, Seven Year Blessing (Ritual)
Third: (2) Scry, What You Have is Mine (Ritual)
Fourth: (2) Temperature Control, Wheel of the Year (Ritual)

I could certainly use this adventure as part of my War of the Witch Queens.

There are others that I have not purchased yet but plan to.  

And finally also in this bundle,

The Craft of the Wise: The Pagan Witch Tradition
From The Other Side Publishing

But I assume you know all about this one.

Tuesday, May 18, 2021

Travelling to Ravenloft

Traveller. I universe in a 3-Ring Binder.
Quick update.  

I was going to spend some time this week going over Traveller. From the Classic Traveller books all the way to the newest editions.  But in my research and reading, I found so much more material out there.  More than I can adequately cover in the time I was giving myself.  So I am continuing my readings, my research, and my analyses. 

There is so much to go through and I don't want to half-ass it.  I owe it to myself really and my love for my original Traveller Book (printed PDF version pictured).

Plus I have this other stack of educational research I need to read over and review for work.  No rest for the wicked right?

ed research

Honestly. I am looking forward to both research tasks ahead of me.

Speaking of wicked.  This came out today.

Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft

So I have even more reading to do before I can say anything intelligent about it. 

I am certainly going to be using it in my games. Been a Ravenloft fan from the very start.

Ravenloft through the ages

WotC's Ravenloft

I can't say much yet save that it looks like a lot of fun.

My son and I talked about what our plans were for this.

Cthulhu Mythos + Ravenloft

His Ravenloft has an avatar of the King in Yellow. So he is working on his own version of Carcosa. One unrelated to the Geoffrey McKinney version or the Fat Goblin Games version.

I think I am headed back to Black Rose.

Ravenloft + Blue Rose

It's going to be fun.

Monday, May 17, 2021

Monstrous Monday: Marching to Mars

It's still Sci-Fi month here at the Other Side and I wanted to do a monster today with some solid sci-fi and old-school roots.  I just couldn't get it to jell the way I wanted. 

Essentially I wanted D&D/OSR/Sci-Fi versions of  Edgar Rice Burroughs' Barsoomian Martians. I was going to give them a few twists, give them a Clark Ashton Smith twist or two, and a dash of Jack Vance. 

Here is what I have so far.

Red Martians

Warlike, intelligent. Most "Human-like" of the Martians.  I am even toying with the idea of making them Matriarchal as my homage to the great Dejah Thoris.

Red Martian
Red Martian, ePic Character Generator

White Martians

Psychic and the only truly evil Martian race.  Rulers are a caste of priests.  Borrowing heavily from Warhammer 40k, UFO myths, and a little bit of DC Comics.

White Martian
White Martian, ePic Character Generator

Green Martians

These guys are essentially my Tharks, but also are a noble race. They are violent and will kill you, but they can be reasoned with.  My goal here is not to make them Space Orcs, Space Dothraki, or Martian Klingons.

Green Martian
Green Martian, ePic Character Generator

There might be others.

All are genetically compatible with each other, more or less.  I'd love to work in "War of the Worlds" into this somehow too. 

For my OSR/D&D-style games, this might be a world within Spelljamming distance or even some sort of Astral Travel.  Adding in bits of Dark Sun might help smooth out some of the rough bits.  It would all work great for an Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea game

For BlackStar I would want the civilization dead and only recently had xeno-archeologists having discovered the ruins of an ancient and vast Martian culture. The horror will come in when they can't figure what it was that killed them all. 

Links to Mars Related Posts

Saturday, May 15, 2021

Sword & Sorcery & Cinema: Galaxy of Terror (1981)

Something a little different tonight, an 80s sci-fi horror movie with a solid Sword & Sorcery feel to it. It's from Roger Corman, so I guess that is not a huge surprise.

Galaxy of Terror (1981)

This movie has everything! My favorite Martian Ray Walston, Erin "Joanie" Moran, Grace Zabriskie, Sid Haig, pre-Freddie (and really young looking!) Robert Englund, a space witch, tentacle rape monsters! Wait. What was that last bit again? Another Roger Corman offering. I have to admit the cast is something else really. 

The movie starts with the crew of our spaceship, the Quest, headed to planet Morganthus by the order of some mysterious dude called "The Planet Master." We never see his face due to the glowy red energy around it. He is playing some game with our Space Witch. Our pilot, Captain Trantor (Zabriskie) was the only survivor of some famous disaster that has left her a little worse for the wear.  We learn Alluma (Moran) is a psychic sensitive and she detects no life on the planet they all but crash land on.

The Quest crew investigates a crashed ship, the Remus, where all the crew seems to be dead. Soon the first crew member, Cos, is killed by some sort of monster with claws.  The crew looks for more survivors and finds a really creepy ass pyramid.  The mission Commander, Ivar, is lowered into the pyramid but he gets attacked by some blood-sucking tentacles.  Quuhod (Haig) is killed by one of his own crystal throwing stars.  Dameia (played by Taaffe O'Connell), in one of the most controversial bits in the movie, is attacked by a giant maggot/worm/tentacle beast who manages to get all her clothes off before it rapes/eats her.  

We find out that Core, the cook (Walston) is some sort of spy. He had been in the disaster the Captain had been in.  She seems to be hallucinating an attack.  We next see her trying to leave the ship but she bursts into flames.   The remaining crew regroup and head back to the pyramid.  They get separated, of course, and picked off one by one until only Kore and Cabren remain. We learn that Kore is really the Planet Master and this pyramid is part of a game. Cabren manages to kill Kore, but becomes the Planet Master in his place.

I'll give the writers credit, there is some background going on here.  I am not sure that it all translates well on the screen though. I like the idea of the pyramid causing fear, but there is no reason why The Master/Kore would actually be interested in it. 

The movie has a solid Alien (1979) and Aliens (1986) feel to it. No surprise really, James Cameron served as Production Designer and Second Unit Director on the film would five years later direct Aliens. 

But, and let's be honest here, the movie is not good. I am not sure why we never saw it then but Erin Moran is terrible in this. Taaffe O'Connell is in it only so she can take off her clothes.  Even mainstays like Robert Englund and Sid Haig are wasted here.  Ray Walston and Grace Zabriskie were obviously here for the paycheck.

Gaming Content

The idea of entering an ancient and abandoned pyramid is as old as...well, the Pyramids.  This one just happens to have a sci-fi horror feel to it.  There are a lot of ideas I could steal for BlackStar. Watching this after reviewing Stars Without Number I am more convinced now that my BlackStar game must have psionics. 

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Tim Knight of Hero Press and Pun Isaac of Halls of the Nephilim along with myself are getting together at the Facebook Group I'd Rather Be Killing Monsters to discuss these movies.  Follow along with the hashtag #IdRatherBeWatchingMonsters.