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I have felt that the last few issues of White Dwarf, and my reviews of them, have been in something of a rut. So for this issue I think instead of dedicating time to the minutia of the issue, I will instead highlight sections and talk about what they meant to me then and now.
Interestingly enough I am starting in the same place; the editorial. Ian Livingstone (and if memory serves these are among his last issues) talks about the state of the British RPG hobby. While in retrospect I can see what he is saying, but back in 84 England was this magical land where True Roleplaying games come from. Even the best American games had English roots. Or so I thought.
Maxer chinese astrology stx fhb interinos asturias 2012 presidential candidates dergestalt e-kart tipuri de colegiile tw. Grey Elf has some very nice resources, such as fonts, a PDF of the quick-start rules for cinematic Unisystem (the system used for the BtVS RPG), and a well-received adventure called 'Don't Fear the Ripper'; Power Star Collectibles, where you can place an online order for Buffy merchandise such as Sunnydale High t-shirts.Missing. Jan 1, 2000 - SUPPORTED VEHICLES/SYSTEMS Complete list of supported vehicles/systems in MULTIECUSCAN 3.9 NOTE: The CANtieCAR interface (which is included in MULTIECUSCAN MULTIPLEXED bundle) supports ALL modules from the list below and does not require adapters. It only requires a 3-pin.
Imagine my surprise living in Illinois that Ground Zero for RPGS was just a couple hundred miles north of me. When I got to college I heard stories about how Gary would come down to SIU to play D&D. The store I was mail ordering from to get rare items (like White Dwarf) was in a Chicago suburb I would later move too and stay for 10 years. So my perspective then was one of an anglophile living in a town that was in the middle of a cornfield and not really based on any reality. It is interesting though that reading this now I do still think of the British RPG market as being more serious. I think this is largely due to White Dwarf itself.
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It was about this time I was HEAVY into Doctor Who, so the FASA game was on my must have list. Up next is an article about playing Ninjas in FRPGs. In the early 80s everyone was obsessed with Japanese culture and society. Though I guess ninjas never really go out of style. I have played exactly 1 ninja my entire gaming life. His name was (horrible I know) Oko-nishi.
My lame attempts at a Japanese sounding name. In my defense at what I knew was bad I made him a half-orc.
It must have been around this time I made him too using the Oriental Adventure rules. My then DM and I had worked up a D&D combat simulator and we plugged him in with 9 other characters. He was attacked by a Black Dragon (or Red, cant recall) and killed. The dragon kept attacking him and only him. We had not worked out all the errors. In the end he had been reduced to something like -70 hp.
My DM offered to let him be ok, or keep him dead. We enjoyed watching it so much and getting the mental image of this dragon jumping up and down on my dead ninja that I felt it was a waste to say it never happened.
I am pretty sure that my half-orc ninja was not based on the cover of this issue. Open Box switches to a new format. The games are now on 'cards' like an offset window, self contained. It makes it easier to see what you are reading and jump to a particular game, but the space economy is terrible. The review I focused on was the World of Harn game. It gets a 6/10.
A few more pages in we get something that was a feature of Dragon, the stating up of book characters. In this case The Belgariad by David Eddings. This is something I do to this day. The issue then as now is that characters in books, movies or TV are not built according to the D&D rules.
We saw that a couple of issues back with Gandalf cast as a Cleric. There is an ad for the books later in the magazine. Up next is an interesting Call of Cthulhu game that takes place in the future on a distant planet. The Last Log is an interesting thing really. I was not expecting to see CoC used like this, but of course it works. The creatures of Lovecraft's stories are more alien than demonic.
This very notion will be explored again and again till most recently with and. The adventure itself would fit in nicely with either of the newer products above and it was a nice bit of forward thinking. Not so forward was the 'dot matrix printer paper' of the layout, but hey. We also get an AD&D adventure on an island.
The minis section works with the Cthulhu adventure (which some are used) and/or Traveller or Star Frontiers. We get more ads in the middle of the magazine, similar to the style of Dragon including one for the new Dragonlance modules. Fiend Factory seems to get back to made it so good in the past, really neat monsters. This issue has monsters from the Planes. An article on Tech in D&D. For no reason better than 'I don't wanna!'
I never liked tech in D&D including black powder. The newstand reports that TSR is releasing the Companion Rules.
I had moved on to AD&D at this point and was not a fan of the Mentzer books. Now I am of course. Also excitement over the new Indiana Jones game that is due out. An interesting bit about a new movie based on H.P.
Lovecraft's The Colour Out of Space is being made. Wonder what happened to it? Near the end we get one of the first of what I call the 'classic' ads for MERP from ICE. So in truth this is a better issue than the previous ones. The common thread is taking the game you are playing and doing something new with them. Maybe we are turning a corner here.
The portions of the modules that were 'pull out' like maps, the visual guide to Tomb of Horrors and Expedition Beyond the Barrier Peaks and the new monsters and spells booklet for S4 are all bound in int he book. The 87 Realms of Horror had it as a seperate booklet.
So what is the verdict? Well it's mixed.
The S series were 'my' modules. These are the ones I ran in my group in High School and I recently had so much fun with them when I took my kids through and. One day I will take them through the Tomb of Horrors, I have a copy for every edition of the game and certain the Barrier Peaks. So yeah, I love these crazy ass adventures. But this book is not the best way to the run them.
It's a great book for the 40+ year old geek that enjoys reading these things. I love that these books are getting made. I also enjoyed the new introduction by Lawrence Schick that gave some insight to the writing of the modules.
Honestly I think the best modern form of the old modules are the ones you can get from. I can buy the PDF for cheap and print out what I need. Often I print out player's maps and I usually print out a page per sheet (not a page per side) so I can write notes on the blank backsides of the pages. I can then through the whole thing in a 3-Ring binder with any other material I need (such as monster page from the Tome of Horror).
Still though. I am still considering getting the others.
I know the A series is up next. I never owned copy of the original modules so I might get that. I have not seen the GDQ modules on the products page, but I grabbed the PDFs. Still though. Tomb of Horrors in it's original 1st deadliness.
That's gotta be worth something. Next weekend my friend Greg is hosting a mini-con for his D&D group, the Streamwood Dungeoneers.
My son plays in his group every weekend, so I was asked to prep and run an Old School adventure. Greg wanted to give his players, the Gen Con experience since none of us are going Gen Con or even Gary Con this year. I had a bunch of ideas, but I wanted to play to my strengths. At first I wanted to do Ravenloft, but that would take to long.
So instead I am going to run using / D&D and my. I have been dying to run this since I first. This is a classic adventure and has been talked about on various blog before. Here is and a bit from. To be able to run this in a Con like setting is going to be a real treat.
Since that 2010 post I have picked up another (not sure if it is the same Pacesetter that did 1st Ed Chill). The module is thin. Not just in size but in terms of plot too. I'll give the kids some background and I might develop the character of the vampire queen more using my (which is free by the way). She is a self-styled vampire Queen in my mind. So not or even. But in truth it is going to be a simple dungeon crawl with lots of undead and a big bad at the end.
Just like like to old days! But I have this figure too.
An update to my and of my Sympathy for the Succubus. Been reading a bunch on the Succubus and how she fits into the D&D game specifically. She has an odd place really.
A sex-demon in a game that downplays sex in favor of violence. Ecology of the Succubus The succubus can play the ultimate temptress.
Typically we see the succubus as an agent of power in the game and that is certainly true for the latest edition. For D&D 4, we have the and the authors' blog,. There is another the Ecology of the Succubus from the late lamented. For 4th edition. This article is by Sersa Victory and feels slightly longer (hard to say given the different formats), but there is a still a lot of useful material here regardless of the game you are playing.
They both used similar elements tot he succubi I have presented here in my blog and in Eldritch Witchery. No big surprise there, we are all drawing from the same myths and legends. Both try to do some mental gymnastics to cover the change of succubi from demons to devils. Both work rather well, but I took a different approach myself. For Pathfinder there is Six new sub-types of Succubi for your Pathfinder/OGL game.
Plus new magic, feats and plot devices for using succubi in your games. No rules for Succubi PCs, but nearly everything else is here. For D&D 5, it looks like.
Good Succubi Succubi have always been a favorite of many gamers. So it is no surprise that every so often we get a 'Good' Succubus.
From D&D 3 we had. I liked her story and wish WotC had done some more with her.
For example makes her a Paladin of Heironeous. She appeared in the adventure,.
I would use her as something like a character. Roaming the lands, maybe incognito, trying to do the most good she can. Love is a disease. At least that is how the succubi might feel if you use this supplement in your OGL games. The Noble Succubus (not 100% sold on that name, but it does work and I can't come up with anything better) is a succubus that has become infected. She is no longer a demon, but a creature with a soul that feels.
In a sense a 'good' (if chaotic) succubus. The role-playing options here abound. There is plenty of background information that can be used and plenty of hooks into various game worlds including modern, sci-fi and the standard fantasy.
The real meat though is in the crunch on what the differences between the Noble and Demonic Succubi and how to use Noble Succubi as characters. Myself I would make them much rarer, and still have it be a process that maybe one in 100 Billion succubi could go through. I also think it would be interesting to have a Noble Succubus and for whatever reason choose to remain evil. That would be an adversary worth having. Succubi and their Kin I have also been doing a lot of generic demon research lately. For a buck you get a list of 100 demons. There is a name and description.
Culled from a variety of sources such as the Lesser Key of Solomon, the Pseudomonarchia Daemonum and others. It also has tables for various demon aspects and motivations. The information here can be found elsewhere, but for a buck you are getting it all in one place and formatted. Can be used with any game that has demons. There are no stats and nothing in the way of measure the power of one demon to the next, but that is not what they are advertising here. Great if you need new, random demons.
One of the great things about working on so many projects it has given me the chance to recast the demons as I like. I am very excited to get some of the things I am working on into your hands and I hope you enjoy them too. A few new products I picked up at the.
My boys are getting ready for their huge campaign finale. The giant battle against Tiamat on the Island of the Dragon Empire. Back in the dawn of time the Dragon and their Dragonfolk surrogates ruled the world from the Dragon Island. Those days are gone and the Dragon Empire has fallen. But the Island remains and that is where the characters will make their stand. I am gearing up for the BIG finale of my years long 3e game. The final battle where the forces of good battle the forces of evil happens on an Iceland-like island in my world.
I could have drawn anything, I could have even taken an older module and altered the island in Photoshop. With this product I didn't have too. It even looks almost EXACTLY like what I wanted. The ZIP file contains maps of the island.
Non-marked, marked and hexed variants. Plus a BW version. There is no text or fluff to go with this, which is great, I have my own. This is my new Dragon Isle!
I would love to see more products like this one. My new island is going to need people too.
I got this product for the new witch hexes but the rest of it is great as well. There is a cool Eastern Flavor to this and I want to see if there is more in this series. While I have a lot of cultures on my game world the one thing that has been getting the short end of my attentions are Dragonfolk/Dragonborn.
This book, while not explicitly designed for that, is perfect for my needs (and the cover kinda helps with that). So what do we get? 20 pages (with cover, credits page, OGL statement and 2 pages of 'Ads'). While there is an Eastern 'flavor' to this, it is presented mostly context free. The Barbarian is based on totem animals, which is a really awesome variant. I normally don't play barbarians, but I would try one of these.
The Cavaliers are the Order of the Ancestors and Order of the Creed. Monks, a natural fit, are presented as Kensai (one of my favorite classes back in the day). Imagine the typical unarmed monk, now armed. And finally, the Witch, with a bunch of new and exciting hexes based on Elemental magics or Dragon magic (see it is a perfect fit!!). In fact these are some of the best Dragon Witches I have ever seen.
So this is worth the price of the book alone to me. We also get plenty of new feats. This was a nice surprise and I am very happy with this. I own a few of the Midgard products, but this one really called to me. This Dragon Empire is very similar to the one I was crafting for my own game world, so this saves me some heavy lifting. The 30 pages of this book is jam-packed.
What did I like in this? Well I love the castes. Dragons seem very arrogant and a caste system makes sense.
I liked how the castes were set up as well. Lots of great role-playing potential in these. We get a bunch of new Traits and Feats. Classes get a bit of an update as to be expected. There is a Cavalier archetype, the Order of the Firedrake (which is a PERFECT with my world's own White Drakes).
The Druids have the Elemental Exarch. Fighters get Edjet Warriors, and the Magus has the Dragon Magus. We get a couple new monks, Monk of the Fiery Fist and Monk of the Wind Palm. There is also the Mystery of the Void, Greyscale and Void Elemeentalist for the Oracle, Rouge and Elementalists respectively. There is also the Dragon Emir prestige class which I am sure my son would love.
The book end with new spells, exotic goods and magic items, including magic the magic carpet. I am going to have to look for more books in this series. We always need more monsters. Over a 100 new monsters for Pathfinder. Lots of really interesting ones too. I loved the Shadow Fae, Ice Maiden and Red Hag and have hooks already for all of them.
The new dragon types are also very interesting and I can't wait to use a Mithril Dragon or Baby Yaga's Horsemen. In fact there are two completely separate campaigns I want to use this book in, a Dragon based one and a Witch-centric one. Both need unique monsters that the players have never seen before, and there are a number of monsters here that are perfect for one or the other or both! Also available for and.
This 28 page (27 + cover) pdf features 6 dragon crossbreads including the oft stated Orange and Yellow Dragons. But you also get the Blade, Steel, Rust and Gray Dragons. These dragons are pretty interesting and for the game I have coming up I need a lot of interesting dragons.
The book also includes the Dragon Blooded 'class' though it is also sort of a race. They are humanoid dragons. Plenty of things you can do with this class as well as alternate versions depending one where the blood came from. In a neat little feature you also get the art from the book in a seperate file. So now you can show your players exactly what a Yellow Dragon looks like. This book is for the d20 Modern Game, Pathfinder and a few other d20 based games.
It presents a generic form of a spellcaster that isn't a wizard, cleric, witch or druid. In a sense it is a throwback to the older 'Magic User' class. The basic premise here is to provide full powered (up to spell level 9) spellcasters from D&D like games to your Modern Games. I am not sure how this works out in play, but the concept on it's own is interesting enough. There are new feats and a fun 'arcane death' table.
Frankly I would like to see that expanded into an 'Arcane CSI' to be used in any modern game with magical elements. White Dwarf #55 comes to us from July 1984. Our cover this month is what can only be called a 'Space Marine'. The cover is good as in well done, but it doesn't fill me with anything. I might have passed this issue up in the stores.
Still though, I was a bit down on Sci-Fi games at this point, so I am sure that it would have been lost on me anyway. Ian Livingstone's editorial is once again ripped from today's headlines. The Gaming Hobby is DYING!
But he admits that despite the shrinking market and layoffs the hobby is only changing. He is right of course and the hobby will never hit the peaks it hit at this time, but it is, and was, changing. Interestingly enough I did not have this perspective back then.
To me it seemed like the gaming hobby would go on forever, if I thought about it all. Marcus Rowland continues his Name of the Game series with Supers, Spies and Scary Guys.
Superhero games are covered with Champions claiming the top spot. Spy games are next with Top Secret featured. Next are the 'odd' games which includes a diverse lot of Call of Cthulhu, Daredevils and Gamma World. Historical games end the article. Spiderbite is next and it is a short scenario for D&D/AD&D, for 1st to 2nd level characters.
There are some interesting changes here. First thing you notice are the 'DM's' sections to each room/adventure area. Canned text for the DM to read that began with B3. Also are the 'newer' non-orthogonal maps, ala Ravenloft (see next section). It comes in at four pages, but seems smaller than that. The newer format certainly takes more text. Open Box has some reviews.
We get our first supplement to Warhammer, Forces of Fantasy. I will admit I know very, very little about Warhammer except what is commonly known. Jon Sutherland gives it a 7/10 and asks why was the Warhammer book so full of errors (glitches as he says) to need this book? A bunch of TSR modules are next, X5, L2, I5 and the immortal I6. Dave Morris goes over them in turn. He has the highest praise for X5, Temple of Death which he gives 10/10.
L2 gets 7/10, I5 9/10 and Ravenloft gets a 8/10. He loves the plot and does call it a straight Hammer Horror yarn, but bemoans the puns. Sherlock Holmes - Consulting Detective and an associated adventure The Mansion Murders are reviewed. Nic Grecas enjoys it as a welcome diversion from dragon slaying or blasting aliens and gives it a 9/10. I have been looking for a copy of this for a while. Still haven't found one yet. Finally Stuart Aston has a few books for Starfleet Battles; SSD Books 1, 2 and 3.
All get a 9/10. Critical Mass has more book reviews. The only book in the bunch I can recall is Stephen Donaldson's Daughter of Regals.
I remember getting this through the Science Fiction/Fantasy Book Club (ok hands up, who was a member?) and I enjoyed it, which is interesting because I didn't really care for much of Donaldson's other works. The reviewer here disliked the book mostly (but liked his other stuff from the sounds of it). ICE breaks up the flow (eh) with a full color ad for the Fellowship of the Ring boardgame.
Phil Holmes has more undead for RuneQuest. Now back in the day I was not into RuneQuest except as a way to get more Call of Cthulhu into my D&D. These days I am trying to educate myself more on RQ and this is the sorta thing I enjoy. Another full page, full color ad. This time to let us know that Finieous Fingers is going to Fantasy Gamer Magazine.
One though has to wonder if the big selling point of your magazine is the appearance of a comic. BUT this is Fineous Fingers, and while I never was a big follower of any particular magazine comic (with maybe the exception of 'What's New!'
) even I knew of FF. Crash Course, bi-monthly Car Wars column is next. This one concerns punks in 2034.
While it is easy to read this now and think 'that is only in 20 years', its still an interesting insight into 1984. Animal cults and worship for D&D is next.
Tony Parry and Jerry Vaughn correctly point out that this is an area that has gotten very little attention in D&D. And they are still correct. Castle of Lost Souls part 4 is next, finishing up the series. This seems to be the longest one yet. I think I should give this one a try sometime. Letters covers some of the same observations that I have had.
The magazine looks better than ever, but showing signs of slowing down and not being as cutting edge as it once was. Other bemoan the lack of Traveller articles and the increase in RuneQuest ones. Additionally one letter states how they don't like Travellers (the comic).
Speaking of, Thrud is next. Tabletop Heroes gets the color pages again. It is my memory that at this time Dragon was moving away from minis while White Dwarf was embracing them more. I could be wrong though. RuneRites has some really cool looking threats for RuneQuest. First we have a bipedal bat-like monster, a rather nasty spell and a magic ring that seems to be just as cursed as it is magical. Fiend Factory has the Gods of the Shapelings (from last issue).
The gods seem more interesting than I recall the monsters being. The trouble is they are presented as something along the lines of uber-archetypes to fit the psychology of the Shapelings. Noble effort, but the result is the gods seem a little bland. Though with some work I think they would work out well. Treasure Chest has an interesting article about Arch Enemies in FRPs (and D&D in particular). I like the idea. The concept of the reoccurring villain is older than Lex Luthor or the Joker, and not something I think we use enough in fantasy games.
It is something VERY common in games like Buffy, or Ghosts of Albion sure. But there is something to be said about having an enemy come back for more and more. Keeping him alive though is the real trick. Travellers is next followed by an article on variant universes in Traveller. We learn about Mayfair's 'The Keep' movie tie-in game/adventure.
Also from Mayfair are the Roleaids products. RQ3 is on the way. The Star Trek RPG from FASA will hit the shores of the UK soon. We end with the usual rounds of ads. Not much to say about this issue really. Nothing new or innovative from the last few issues to be honest, but serviceable material.
I think WD needs to shake it up a bit here soon. There is just something about a big red box for games.
I have not been able to get Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea in it's big red box form, but I do have it on PDF, and let me say it is really nice. So what do you get with this? Well there is a 256 page player's book, 240 page Referee's book, a map of Hyperborea and pdfs of the Box Covers. So all in all about 500 pages worth of old school playing goodness. Now there is a lot here that is old hat for the experienced role-player and some that is similar to many of the OSR games. That all being said it does also make it a great intro game for anyone and there is a still so much here for the old-timers that I don't feel a page is wasted. The Players Book focuses on making characters, magic and combat.
So ability scores are covered, alignment and classes. Most of this is the same as say D&D or S&W, but there are enough little changes to make it worth your notice. For starters the races of Hyperborea are all human-centric.
So we have Amazons, Kelts, Kimmerian, Vikings and Hyperboreans among others. All what I call the 'Conan' races. Let's move to the classes. There are the four basic classes, the Fighter, Magician, Cleric and Thief. But each also has 4 to 6 subclasses. Fighter has the Barbarian, Berserker, Cataphract, Paladin, Ranger and Warlock.
The Magician has Illusionist, Necromancer, Pyromancer and Witch. The Cleric has the Druid, Monk, Priest, and Shaman. Finally the Thief has the Assassin, Bard, Legerdemainist and Scout. Each subclass is very much like it's parent classes with some changes.
The classes look pretty well balanced. I liked the bard as a single class option (nice to have and not something that we had in 1979). I would love to try out the Necromancer, Witch and Warlock and I know my son would love to try the Pyromancer. Each class has a 'Fighting Ability' and a 'Magic Ability' which relates to attacks.
So yes, even magicians can get a little better in combat as they go up in level. It's a great little shorthand and works great. So a 4th level Fighter has a fighting ability of 4. A 4th level magician still only has a fighting ability of 1 and a cleric 3 and thief 3. Sub classes can and do vary. AC is descending (like old school games), BUT with the Fighting Ability stat it could be converted to an ascending AC easy. There are background skills and weapon skills.
The next 90 or so pages deals with magic and all the spells. The max spell level is 6. Not a bad number really and that is still plenty of spells. The last 60 pages of the Player's book deals with combat in all it's forms.
So combat, mass combat, saves and conditions. A great collection really of some of the 'Best of' ideas I have seen in many games, but it all works really nice here. The Referee's Manual is next. It is nearly as big (240 pages vs 256). The first half is fully devoted to monsters. The format is most similar to Basic or Labyrinth Lord, and it is full of the usual suspects with some notable exceptions. For starters this book includes the Demons (but not the devils).
It does NOT include any dragons. But to make up for it there are many of the 'Lovecraft' races such as the Great Race, Elder Things and fish men. Great inclusion. The next 50 or so pages covers treasure. Among the magic items are things like Radium Pistols and other sc-fi artifacts. Finally we end with the Hyperborea Gazetteer. A great bit that I can easily drop into my game.
The lands are a pastiche of Howard, Vance, Lovecraft and Smith. If these names mean anything to you then you know, or have an idea, of what you are going to get here. All together this is a package of such great ideas I can't wait to use it somewhere. For me this would work perfect a ' in my own. I would include my own in any AS&SH game though. The witch is a nice class, I would supplement some of for it.
With the GM's sales going on this is a great buy. You can also buy the print version from their website (and find other goodies too). This game is so full of potential. Whether you play it as is or as a supplement to your favorite old-school game. According to Simone: 'It's like this.even most of the best female heroines when I was a kid were pretty polite. What I love about Sonja is that she isn't polite, she says what she means and if you give her any lip about it, hello, sword in the gut.
She's smart, she has a heart, she has some compassion. But when it's go time, she's a hellraiser, a mad general, she's a sword edge virtuosa, she's death on wheels. She is the woman you never want to mess with. I can relate, Sonja.
No offense to all her guy writers, but THIS Red Sonja is about sex and swords! It's everything you love about Red Sonja, except with more monsters getting stabbed in the eye.' Red Sonia #1 is out in July. How about some mixes today! Zatanna and people/places that are new or different.
Been thinking a lot about mix-ups, mash-ups and general peanut butter in chocolate games. As Doctor Fate by. on With Scarlet Witch by on Original costume on JL Dark by.
on With Circe (not often together) by. on On her date with Tony Stark by. on With the illusionist Davida Steelmine (from The Mask: The Animated Series (ok I don't know this one either). By on With Totoro!! By. on With Batgirl (not a big stretch) by on and Zatanna as a Ravenclaw student, which is exactly where I'd put her too. By.
on I enjoyed these! We identify ourselves as Gamers. To us it has been a mantle we have alternately been burdened by and worn with pride. Mostly pride, given the group that usually reads my blog. But we are not the only ones that call themselves Gamers. There is that other group.
Video games and RPGs have always coexisted in the popular consciousness together. Yeah.yeah H.G. Wells blah blah Little Wars.that is not what I am talking about. In the popular consciousness RPGs hit the market maybe 30 seconds before video games did. The Atari 2600 entered into home market in October of 1977, around the same time as the first printings of AD&D.
Sure OD&D was out before that and there were video games before the 2600 too. Indeed the 2600 is part of the 2nd Generation of video games, with the 1st gen starting in 1972. The cost of entry to the home video game hobby is higher than RPGs, the prices are remarkably stable. For example RPGs have been something of a steady state tech, video games and their hardware are fully in line with; getting cheaper while getting better. The 2600 retailed for $199.00 in 1977, the Wii retailed at $249.99 30 years later. Video Gamers and TT Gamers have always seen to eye to eye.
I know for a fact that someone on my reader list has seen someone come into their FLGS to look for a video game only to be mocked out of the store. The issue I have is that this divide really should not exist Granted. I have no clue what some Video Gamers are talking about sometimes. I am still only level 2 in Skyrim, never played WoW, Everquest or anything else like that. I have been playing Lolipop Chainsaw for about 8 months and still am not past 'level 2' on it. So before I go deeper into this I want to ask. What video games are you all playing?
Did you pick them because they appeal to your TTRPG background? Or because they are opposite of an RPG? Why that game? Back when I was in high school I had these two friends that put together this 'fake' band ala Spinal Tap. The name of the band was 'Harvey Goes to Valala' which was an obvious play on 'Frankie Goes Hollywood' and my high school and college nickname 'Harvey' (long story). I say 'fake' because it was supposed to be in fun, but my two friends really got into it to the point of 'releasing' an album called 'Pocket Full of Braincells' (also a full year before Spin Doctors came out with A Pocket Full of Kryptonite, no no there was nothing too that, something in the water in the late 80s/early 90s I am sure).
I liked the town, Valala, and always thought it was this out of the way place up north where the people were weird but had limited outside influences to keep themselves sane. Valala, Alaska took various shapes and forms in my mind since the late 80s. It wasn't till the late 90s/early 00s that I considered using the game. I thought about it again when I was running a WitchCraft game online a few years back, 'Vacation in Vancouver' which was a fun, but really dark and adult game (deaths in a prostitution ring that catered to supernatural clients). The Valala game was going to be something along the lines of a weird Northern Exposure.
A town full of odd folk and supernaturals. There was going to be humor, but dark. Over the weekend I was doing laundry and found the 'concert' shirt for the Harvey Goes to Valala World tour. All the towns were places where we all had run off to go to college. But it got me thinking about this game again. I still think is a great choice for it, but again with dark humor and really strange people; both mundane and supernatural.
Everything in most modern supernatural games are so serious. This would be. Sure things would still be dangerous. But the characters would all be locals and quirky ones at that. With WitchCraft I could use all the supernatural types. I have always wanted a Werebear character in one of of these games. I also had this idea for an old and lazy vampire.
Basically the opposite of every other vampire you have ever seen. He's old, ugly, poor and lazy. He survives by trapping animals.
I'd also have to include some crazy ass, conspiracy theory- believing, 'prepper' guy. Someone living in a hole in the ground with his guns and cans of beans. It was pointed out to me that this is a similar idea to Buffy. But mine would be less Joss Whedon and more David Lynch.
I would need to get some basic adventure ideas together. The trick is to take a normal supernatural adventure and do something bizarre with it. The first one I came up with was about a Sasquatch. In the normal adventure the Sasquatch is causing problems or killing the local livestock. In a 'Buffy' version the Sasquatch is a demon.
In the 'Valala' version the Sasquatch is having sex with the females of the local moose population. The cries of the moose are keeping people up at night. The moose hanging around the outskirts of the city because they are enjoying are causing even more problems.
So the issue is not 'wow Bigfoot is reall!' It's 'Bigfoot is real. And he is a nasty perv keeping everyone up at night.' If I come up with some more ideas I'll share them. Thought with what I have been thinking of lately you might not want me too! I'll have to look to see what I have of this. I seem to recall making a map of the town at one point.
It was on the water. Some of my favorite TV shows growing up were Kolchak: The Night Stalker, the Twilight Zone and the Outer Limits. Moving into the 80s it became Tales From the Crypt, Tales From the Darkside and Monsters. At one point in time I could claim I had owned every movie that featured Dracula. It should be no big surprise then that my games all had a horror bent to them.
My foray into pure fantasy lit was limited to be honest. I read, and loved, Tolkien. But that lead to the darker fantasy of Elric and the Eternal Champion and then into horror; specifically Lovecraft. I never turned back. I enjoy horror, I love all the tropes and the cliches to be honest. The difference really between fantasy and horror for me is the power levels between the villain and heroes.
If the heroes have some expectation to survive (even if they don't) then that is fantasy. If the heroes have no expectations to survive (even if they do) that can be horror. I do like overlap though too. I did and still do enjoy Sci-Fi. More in the 70s and 80s than today I think.
I grew up on Star Trek and Star Wars and for the longest time The Next Generation was my favorite show. My biggest sci-fi love though then as now is Doctor Who. Doctor Who has been great for me since it includes so many genres. I can get horror, sci-fi, adventure and fantasy all in one package. Even today, I find myself going back to the well as it were. I get to watch the old Hammer Films on DVD or Blu-Ray now and the extras are more than worth the price.
What are your Foundations? If you have not been watching the then you are missing out.
The premise is that, and are all sharing a house in a reality show ala the Real World. Episode 7 features a familiar witch! Episode 8 though might have the best line in series. Lisbeth: 'I'll give him a special tattoo, 'I am a sparkling douche-bag.'
' I think the actresses are great. I have to do a double take any time I see 'Hermione' in that Allstate comercial.;) My boys love the show too. I'd love to build a game around this idea. Players take any character from any media and throw them all together in a house and make them try to get along. Something like Cortex+ would be the serious choice, but I am thinking something more along the lines of.
What game system do you all think would work the best? It is funny as hell.
The Teratic Tome is an 'old school' monster book for OSRIC or any old School 'Advanced' version of the game. What do you get? Let's start with some of the things that others have not all mentioned first. This book is 100% OGC. So if you want to use one of these horrors in one of your products go right ahead.
Just abide by the OGL. There are a lot of reasons why you might want to use these monsters too. They are some of the most original horrors I have seen outside of indie horror games. The layout and feel is evocative of those 'monster manuals' of old. It does quite a nice job of it too. The art though is much better than what you would have seen circa 1980.
The art varies in style, but all of it is quite good. Now is a good time to point out that the art and the monsters they depict are not for the faint of heart. There is a lot of 'body horror' here.
The grotesque mixed with the commonplace or even the erotic. The feeling is more Clive Barker than H.P.
Lovecraft and I think that was a great direction to go. Truthfully I would have picked this up for the demons and dragons alone, but there are 120 pages worth monsters here. Even the halflings are evil little buggers in this tome.
If you like horror and new creatures, and your players can handle it, then this is a great monster book. If you like horror and monster books in general, then this is great to have as well. Plus who can argue with a $6.66 price tag? Who should not get this? I don't know really. I mean I am not going to use any of these creatures in my games with my kids. So that does lessen the utility for me, but I can still use some ideas.
And that is just as good. A lot of people like to call this the 'LotFP Monster Manual' but that is not being fair to this book to be honest. It really is more than that. You can learn more about the book at the author's website: Or you can pick up a hardbound copy at Lulu: If you buy the PDF first then you get a discount on the hardcover.
Not a bad deal really.