If you love me, you’ll buy me one

What every veteran gamemaster needs: the ultimate gaming table. Presenting — the Sultan!

(Come on, pweeezze!! I’ll be your best buddy!)

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Pointy, I am

I am an eight-sided die:

From the description:

You are a d8: You are the true adventurer! Dragons rescued, princesses slayed, and all that business while O Fortuna plays in the background. Your social calender is crammed with heroic deeds, and you’ve personally saved the world from ultimate destruction at least twice. You are reliable, perhaps a bit predictable, but overall a shining example of what happens when courage meets determination.

So true, so true. 🙂

Take the quiz at dicepool.com

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Recommended reading

If you’re into roleplaying games, that is. Following a review at James Maliszewski’s Grognardia blog, I took a chance on the latest issue of Knockspell, a print and PDF quarterly journal from Black Blade Publishing for the “old school revival” or “retro-Dungeons and Dragons” segment of the hobby. From what I gather, BBP specifically focuses on supporting clones of first edition AD&D and the original three booklet D&D, such as OSRIC and Swords and Wizardry, respectively.

Anyway, I’ve so far read only the adventures in the issue, but I’m very impressed. I was particularly taken with Jeffrey Talanian’s Rats in the Walls, an homage to one of my favorite H.P. Lovecraft stories. Dark fantasy at its best, it succeeded in capturing the feel of Lovecrafts’ Dreamlands or Clark Ashton Smith’s Zul-Bha-Sair, or the more modern works of Tanith Lee and Michael Moorcock. In fact, the setting screams out to be part of Moorcock’s Million Spheres setting. If I were to run this, I’d most likely use Stormbringer or WFRP 1E rules, rather than a D&D retro-clone. That’s not a knock on those systems, just a reflection of my own tastes.

Knockspell is available as a $5 PDF or a $10 perfect-bound magazine. If you’re into retro-D&D games or looking for ideas for almost any fantasy system, give it a try. I bet you’ll like it.

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I’m not sure what this says about me

Brave Halfling is a small, independent publisher of some very nice products geared toward the Retro-D&D or “old-school gaming” movement.

But, for some reason, I keep thinking of them as “Bad Halfling.”

I don’t know why. Their private lives are their business, not mine….

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Well, phooey!

I thought I had scored a bargain on eBay: two almost-legendary adventure modules for D&D and other roleplaying games, Plague of Terror and Street of Gems, from an obscure Maine publisher called The Companions. Part of their Islandia campaign (a world designed by taking a topographic map of Maine and flooding it to the 500′ mark), these were eyeopening products for me: detailed settings, believable motives and plans for the non-player characters, and timelines of how things would proceed if they players didn’t interfere. Yet they didn’t restrict the players in any way: they were free to do what they wanted, and the world would go on around them.

So, when I saw good copies of these two up for auction, I knew I had to have them. Sure, I already had a copy of each, but I wanted more. And, fully admitting this just wasn’t rational, I bid $25 for each. I waited and prepared to curse myself, even as I quivered with anticipation. Yes, I now have some idea of how crack addicts must feel.

Then some reprobate outbid me for both. His madness was greater even than mine, paying over $40 for each.

Curse you! (Shakes fist at heavens)

Ah, well.  Probably for the best. I wonder how high he was willing to go?

Oh, and Happy New Year! (Hey, it’s still January, and this is the first post of 2010, after all.)

ADDENDUM: I forgot to mention, I did score a copy of Runequest II in good shape for what I thought was a reasonable price. I’d lost my own copy years before, so it wasn’t all bad on eBay. 🙂

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To the dungeon with you!

The site is linked in the sidebar to the right, but I wanted to promote Megadungeon.net as something special: a collaborative, volunteer-based design of of a large, ruined monastery and dungeon in the tradition of the early days of roleplaying games, especially Dungeons and Dragons. Even if you don’t play D&D, the maps are quite nice and easily ported to other games. There are some nice new creatures, too.

Well done.

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