Recent Arrivals: The North Texas Report

 What, already?

Yes, I promised to go onto a game-buying fast until I bull through some of the games I have already purchased. But a large box arrived from the folks at the North Texas RPG Con down in Irving, Texas. Each year, they present the Three Castles Award. Candidates are submitted and reviewed by a committee of several wise, sage, heads. For the past few years, my colleague Steve Winter and I have been among those wise, sage heads. We read, we review, and we vote. At this point I don't know who the winner is, but if you disagree with my comments, you can yell at Steve, since he'll be down at the convention.

There are also a couple things that have come over the transom, and one that was purchased from my local shop, but first off, let's look at the nominees for the Three Castles.

Denizens of the Blood Sands, a Science Fiction Bestiary by Zac Goins, RPG Ramblings, 56-Page digest-sized hardbound, 2025, Three Castles Award Candidate. This is a nifty little monster manual in full-color, designed for Old School Essentials version of D&D, and packs a lot of potential for "sword-and-planet" style settings like Dark Sun or Empire of the Petal Throne, as well as post-apocalyptic settings like Gamma World (in all its variable rule sets). There are desert dwellers and host of lost technologies rolling around here, along with mutations in the desert (This year's crop of candidates has a LOT of mutations in it, for some reason). I found it charming. 

Dark Visions, ALSO by Zac Goins, RPG Ramblings, 86-page digest-sized hardbound, 2025, Three Castles Award Candidate. This is a third-party expansion for Shadowdark. Our Monday-night RPG gang is playing Shadowdark right now and having a good old time with it. And Arcane Library, the publisher of Shadowdark, has been very accommodating in letting others use their system and trade dress (the way it looks). The Shadowdark layout is normally clean and clear, and ditto here. This volume primarily builds off the idea of cults, both to the major gods of SD, but adding seven "lesser" gods who are the centers of cult worship. Cults look like they are smaller, more zealous, and more violent than your standard-issue religions. Three new classes are introduced (one cultist, two anti-cultist), along with new spells and two adventures (a third is mentioned, but available separately). Some of the mishaps for cult-spells are career-ending (1d4 limbs melt off the bone, for example), so caution is advised.

Meet Yer Maker by Eddie Bartlett, The Long Con Press, 32-page squarebound, 2024, Three Castles Award Candidate. Early in the age of RPGs (1987), TSR published Treasure Hunt, an adventure for 0-level adventurers (the adventure you have before you decide to be an adventurer). This type of adventure as been embraced in recent years as a "gauntlet" or "funnel", where you throw potential PCs without much differentiating abilities into the maw of danger and those that survive get to go on to 1st level. Sort of expanding the character-creation minigame into a full-fledged game. Anyway, this one kicks off with a Old Western start and goes elsewhere from there, and its very difficult to say you're avoiding spoilers without sending up a flare that spoilers exist. So I'll stop there.

Forgotten Tomb of Acererak by Troy Alleman and William Henry Dvorak, Cannibaal Publishing, 72-page squarebound, 2024, Three Castles Award Candidate. This is distributed through the DM's Guild, which allows access to D&D trademarks in exchange for a healthy cut of the take. In this case, the author is presents an entry-level adventure in Greyhawk featuring the legacy of the S1 - Tomb of Horrors bad guy, the lich Acererak. This particular tomb was Acererak's starter home, which they started digging, discovered something nasty, and hied off to quieter corners of Oerth. You mission (as an entry-level individual) is to locate the tomb and find out what scared Acererak off. And its a solid adventure, very much in the old school Greyhawkian style, and brings in cavefolk and the Flan goddess of nature, Beory. The presentation is solid and clean, and gives you a excellent jumping off point for adventures. If you use the DM's Guild (this writer does not), this is the sort of thing that's really worth checking out. 

Nebulith by Zak S. with Alex Hopson. Lamentations of the Flame Princess, 298-page digest-sized hardbound, 2025, Three Castles Award Candidate. Lamentations of the Flame Princess has a weird Jekyll/Hyde nature, in that it can produce extremely high-quality, RPG-dense material as well as cringy edgelord stuff.  An example of the former from Last year it was A True Relation of the Great Virginia Diastrum. This year it is Nebulith, a beefy Asian (Okinawan) adventure setting that feeds into the weirdness that LotFP does so well. The Nebulith is a volcano magically halted mid-eruption, so it is a huge frozen stone cloud hanging over the island of Awa Nikko, and serves as the "dungeon" for this setting. The setting is rich in lore, changing the euro-centric LotFP rules to adapt to samurai, ninja, and martial arts. This is the first Asian-themed product I've read that beats out the venerable Oriental Adventures from TSR. I love the art, I love the lore, I love the game design. My big challenge is that the graphic design is pretty but often involves hand-drawn lettering and 8-point type, which is hard on these ancient eyes. Worth reading, even if the reading is slow.

The Music of Ericha Zann by James Edward Raggi IV, Lamentations of the Flame Princess, 32-page digest-sized hardbound, 2025, Three Castles Award Candidate. This is the flip-side of LotFP - transgressive, hard-edged, and uncompromisingly bizarre. This sort of thing is much more of a descendent of such ancient and now-mostly-forgotten tomes as Arduin Grimoire, where you turn things up to 11 and don't think about what tomorrow would bring. Anyway, it's a rethinking of the Bard class, not as the high-charisma, social creatures they've evolved into in D&D, but rather as a controllers of cataclysmic cacophony and madness. Their songs rend the world. rip the dimensions, and tear the flesh, and have the potential to destroy your campaign in a single roll. The art shows bards wrecking havoc with alpine horns and triangles, and yes, that is a maiden with a trombone on the cover. And it definitely shows the personal opinions of the designer right on the surface. Music has a lot of interesting ideas within the slim volume, but I would not allow it near my table. 

And for other recent arrivals:

All the Cardinal's Men by M. Bill Heron, Nightfall Games, 128-page hardbound digest, 2025, Kickstarter.  This is a sequel to the excellent Call of Cthulhu adventure Musketeers vs. Cthulhu from a few years' back, the story continues with the Courts of Chaos seeking rule France from behind the scenes. In this case, you get to play members of the Cardinal's Guard, who are the opponents (perhaps "frenemies" is a better term) of the Musketeers in the original Dumas books. Your mission - rescue king and cardinal from the clutches of Chaos and save France! 

DIE the Roleplaying Game Quickstart Edition by Kieron Gillen and Stephanie Hans, Image/Rowan, Rook, and Decard,52-page saddle-stitched softbound, 2025, Midgard Comics. A while back, I read the first issue of the comic book (also by Gillen and Hans), and was not charged up enough about it to continue. The idea (and this may be familiar) was of a group of gamers who suddenly find themselves in the fantasy campaign they played as kids. So in the game you're playing a real-world persona who finds himself in a fantasy world. Sort of like the D&D Cartoon where the Dungeon Master is a bigger jerk. The quickstart itself feels influenced by Powered by the Apocalypse, and lays out the characters, the basics of combat, and a short scenario. I gotta say, it doesn't move me towards picking up the full game, but it was good checking it out.

The Howl of the Chimera by Albert Estrada Zambrano, Shadowland Games, Boxed  Game Set with 212-page hardbound volume plus handouts, 2025, Kickstarter. The content of this one is really tough to talk about without providing clues and spoilers. Action takes place in a country estate where ... well, spoilers. There's a lot going on here, and a lot of background information. The set is a deluxe box containing huge hardbound book in addition to a collection of handouts (which is good, since handouts tend to go to the four winds in my office. Its a lot of material for a scenario they say should run only 4 hours or so, but it is very well presented.

And the winner of the Three Castles Award is: Nebulith, which does not surprise me. It got the most points (yes, out judging had numerous subcategories which had point totals) by a larger-than-usual margin. It is worth hunting down, particularly if you are interested in Asian-themed RPGs.

More later, 

Book: Sunny Daze

 Sunward by William Alexander, Saga Press (Simon & Schuster), 2025

Provenance: I sat with the author on a panel at NorWesCon, and was impressed with what he had to say. His book was a nominee for the Phillip K, Dick award, awarded at that convention. So after the panel I went down and purchased a copy from a booth that was selling all the PKD nominees. So this is the writer's version of a three-cushion bank shot as far as selling your book.

Review: Tova Lir is a courier, running private messages and packages through the solar system. As a side gig, she adopts baby bots - AIs which need a physical housing for the first year or so to establish a sense of self. She's independent (one of her moms runs the moon), and not an achiever. She and her latest baby bot encounters another courier's ship, the courier within it dead. The bot is badly damaged. And now she's a target of assassins as she attempts to get her adopted 'bot repaired at the same time as robots as suspected of being responsible for a terrorist action on the moon. Yes, its a lot for a relatively slender book, but it moves along at a brisk clip.

One thing I like about the book is the "whys" - the worldbuilding that is underneath it. Newly-fashioned bots are housed in physical bodies because their intellects can be swept away by the huge amount of data out there (the allegory is to swimming too far out from shore). Couriers are used because all information over the net is public. Civilization is outside Earth because earth's climate is one of continual storms due to climate change. And a cult of humans sends their dead into the sun in great graveyard armadas. It is a weird future, but a well-reasoned one.

It surprises me is that, while SF has a huge number of subgenres, there is nothing for this type of adventure - the Earth off-limits for some reason, and humanity survives in space. John Varley's Eight Worlds stories, Bruce Sterling's Shaper/Mechanist wars, Charles Stross's Accelerando with its Vile Offspring. All of them moved the center of humanity out, not to stars, but to the further planets. I don't know what to call it - Post-Terran SF? Solarpunk? Human Diaspora? Somebody probably has a better name. 

Alexander's language is clear and straight-forward in this weird world. The author comes out of writing books for young people, and it shows in his plotting and presentation. Tova Lit is an engaging, motivated hero who is putting the band back together (in the form of her former adopted 'bots) to save one of their own. 

It's a good story, and no, it didn't win the PKD Award. Still worth checking out.

More later,

Recent Arrivals: GameholeCon Swag

 So a few weeks back I wrapped up my final gaming convention of the year, Gamehole Con, in Madison, Wisconsin. I usually do only one or two conventions a year, but with the 50th anniversary of D&D, I ended up at five of them. For me, that's a lot of travel.

Oh, the name? Well, Gamehole Con is run by an attorney named Alex Kammer. He also owns a restaurant in Middleton called the Free House, built into a historic building. The stairs to the second floor were too steep to use for a restaurant, so it became his gaming group's hang-out - the Game Hole. In it Alex has collected a huge amount of old gaming material, including the original TSR Forgotten Realms map. And he oversees Gamehole Con, which has been in the Alliant Energy Center to the south of the city. It's a really good convention, incredibly well-run. High marks all around.

And one of the things I like about going to conventions is seeing what is out there as far as new games are concerned. While our local game stores are good, they don't always carry the depth and variety I see at conventions, in particular from small publishers. So I tend to go indulge in a bit of shopping therapy. Plus, you're often buying from the publisher and sometimes from the creator, so that's nice. 

Not everything here is from the convention. one is a local purchase and one from a kickstarter. But the bulk are from the convention, so let us start with those:

Gamehole Con swag: Program Book and a Rust Monster Plushie  The program book is a spartan and effective twenty pager, with ads from the supporting sponsors, maps of the site, policies, and a list of exhibitors and guests (no bios, which is fine).. The events themselves are online with QR Code, which creates a nice versatility (the site itself is very searchable as well). The plushie is a standard for GHC as well, and a freebie to guests (I still have the Mimic from several years ago). The traditional Monster Manual rust monster is this year's plushie. The Lovely Bride has already named him Palladium. 

[Note from the distant past - when the Rust Monster first appeared in D&D, there was no illo to go with it, so, since it showed up with various oozes, I assumed it was a pile of rust with Cookie Monster googley eyes. We didn't hear about the plastic toy until later.]

Wardens of the Eastern Marches, Alex Kammer with Josh Hoyt and Jason Knutson, Gamehole Publishing, 28 page saddle-stitched digest, 2024. Gamehole Publishing (Yes, connected with the Gamehole con) is launching its own organized play at the convention, and this was a free giveaway. The Eastern Marches are the setting for a bunch of adventures they've published over the years (see next entry). This tidy little booklet gives an overview of the world, as well as the basic ground rules for their organized play. All the information in the book can be found here, but it's nice to have a hard copy.

The Brain Gorger's Appetite by Alex Kammer,  Gamehole Publishing, 40-page softbound, 2016, GHC Purchase. Into the Deep Dark by Alex Kammer, Gamehole Publishing, 46-page softbound, 2017, GHC Purchase, Trillium, City of Enchantment by Alex Kammer, Gamehole Publishing, 62-page softbound, GHC Purchase,  2018 All three of these were published over the years by Gamehole Publishing, and sold at the convention. I meant to pick them up last time I was there, and finally did so this time. The three adventures are part of a larger arc, set in what is now the Eastern Marches (see above), and involve a mind flayer brain gorger named Marlipp. The trilogy starts in the small town of Okney's Hold, journeys into the Underdark Deep Dark, and ends up in the faction-ridden city of Trillium. It's old-school adventures wired up for 5E action. 

Lands of Runequest: Dragon Pass by Jeff Richard, Greg Stafford, and Jason Durall, 190-page hardback, GHC Purchase, Runequest doesn't get as much coverage out here in the local hobby stores, so I'm always glad to see it at conventions. Dragon Pass has its roots Waaaay back in the White Bear, Red Moon board game, and it is a highly diverse chunk of land at the crossroads of Glorantha. Lottsa sentient creatures, factions, and politics rolling around. Dragon Pass probably has the greatest weirdness-per-acre of any location in Glorantha. Nice to see the update.

No Time to Scream by B.W. Holland, Bridgett Jeffries with C.L.Werner  Chaosium, 104-page hardback, 2024, GHC Purchase, Call of Cthulhu shows up in the local stores more often, but hey, I was there at the convention booth and they had a sale. No Time to Scream consists of three straight-forward one night-and-change adventures. Though aimed at novice Keepers/GMs with instructions and advice on how to play, the scenarios work well for pick-up games and (insanely) quiet evenings with more experienced players. Works best with pregens, which are provided and also available as an online download (which makes the assumption that the buyer has access both to a computer and a color printer (having a color printer readily at hand is one of the plus sides of the return-to-office push. That and free pens)).

The Order of the Stone by Jared Twing, Lynne Hardy, and Paul Fricker, Chaosium, 152 page hardback, 2024, GHC Purchase. This one feels like an old-school CoC scenario - three chapters, ancient cult, entrapped eldritch god, world-ending threat, hiking distance from Arkham. At first glance, it looks pretty good, with a collection of Lovecraftian set-pieces - ghost ship, small port town, rural wilderness. It's really good to see Chaosium do new old-style adventures in addition to updating the classics for the new system. Player handouts available online, which still has the challenge of No Time to Scream.

Seeds of Decay by Darryl T. Jones, Splattered Ink Games, 436-page hardbound, 2004, Gift of the Author. A big adventure about tiny heroes. The Dobbers are a diminutive people living in the Alwaysgreen Forest, threatened by an eldritch evil that is spreading like rot. Set up specifically for Dobbers and other tiny-size creatures, its two parts cozy game and two parts heroic horror. This is the deluxe edition (gold-foil on the cover). The author is also the artist, so it is a very good-looking product. The hat on top of it is for an upcoming product A Time-Traveler's Guide to Dinosaur Hunting. Nice hat. 

Mazes by Chris O'Neill, 9th Level Games, 240-page hardbound digest, 2022, GHC Purchase. I mentioned Sentai and Sensibility in an earlier write-up, and I found the core mechanic (a single type of die tied to each character class) intriguing, but buried beneath a pile of setting-specific verbage. So when I discovered the system this was based on at GameHoleCon, I had to buy it. This is a revised edition, and is based on the original fantasy version of the game. It is much deeper than Sentai, and uses a number of interesting new systems. I'm currently digging through it. Its presentation is excellent, and it feels like a solid game. 

Scurvy Buggers by Irene Zelinski, 9th level games, 76-page softbound digest, 2024 GHC purchase from designer. I got this from the designer at the Con, and we chatted. This was a pirate (I'm sorry - PYRATE) version of the game system, and it may be that I was already reading the Mazes game, but the rules went down a lot smoother for me than for Sentai and Sensibility. This is very much Black Sails and Our Flag Means Death with genderfluid pyrates. Zelinski expands the one-type-of-dice per class mechanic to include ship types as well. Neat idea. 

Dead Man's Cove, by Tyler and Luke Stratton, Limithron, 1-page folder scenario, GHC Purchase, Buried in the Bahamas, by Luke Stratton, 22-page saddle-stitched digest, The Sinking of the Cthgan, Limithron, 8panel fold-out scenario, all GHC Purchases. It may occur to many readers that I am a sucker for pirates. Pirate Borg was a definitely superior evolution of the Mork Borg system, reshaped to fit the curves of the golden age of piracy. I have these in pdf from the kickstarter, but I really wanted to get hard copy as well. They are radically different in approach, and reflect very much a "maker" culture of craft where the presentation formats are elastic. I think I can keep them with my core book, which is a challenge when you have so many different physical approaches to the supplements. 

The Warded Man by Peter V. Brett, Del Rey, 592-page trade paperback, gift from the author. I met Peter doing a livestream dungeon adventure on Saturday night, and he gave me a copy of the book. Imagine a world where demons show up every night in a twisted version of the initial day of a Minecraft game. The only thing that keeps them at bay are magical wards, and humanity sort of lies low behind its magical walls in the darkness. The Warded Man is the guy who manages to incorporate and utilized the wards, challenging the demons on their own ground. Yeah, this goes on my TBR pile. 

Shadow of the Weird Wizard by Robert J. Schwalb, Schwalb Entertainment, 288-page hardbound and Secrets of the Weird Wizard by Robert J. Schwalb, Schwalb Entertainment LLC, 296-page hardbound, 2024 Kickstarter. About ten years ago, Rob Schwalb wrote the very excellent Shadow of the Demon Lord. This is an update to the system and a new world for that system. Demon Lord was very grimdark, while Weird Wizard is much more in the heroic mode - still a deadly world, but not a doomed one. Call it Greydark? Without too much digging (and yes, it rewards digging), it advances the design of Demon Lord just as Demon Lord advanced the design of D&D Third and Fourth Edition (and in a case of ironies, Demon Lord showed up around the same time as 5th edition, and Weird Wizard showed up with D24 (Yes, I'm still trying to make that a thing). Secrets is both the campaign setting and monster book, and takes the entire system out for a spin. The thing I can dun them for is that the tables use a light grey typeface that is hard on these old eyes. But a lot is going on here, and I'm going to be spending some time with it.

Godzilla The Encyclopedia by Shinji Nishiakawa, Titan Books, 216-page softbound, purchased at Midgard Comics. I bought of copy of this a while back, gave it to a friend who is a BIG Godzilla fan (we plowed through most of his DVDs from the Showa to Millennium era), then went back and bought a copy for myself. Titan is known primarily for their comic book collections, but this one started as a series of articles and just expanded from there. It's write-up of almost every monster in the Godzilla films, and every version of Godzilla, Missing are those that had an original version elsewhere (Rodan is there, but only appears here for when he first fought Godzilla), and the American versions. The writeups are two-page spreads, beautifully illustrated, that cover both in-world facts as well as design discussions of how the various Godzillas changed over the years. This is an incredibly excellent book if you're a Godzilla/Kaiju fan.

That wraps it for now. And more things have shown up while I was putting this together, but for the moment, more later. 

New Arrivals: The Gen Con Haul

 So, I was invited out to Gen Con back in early August as a Guest of Honor this year in Indy, and despite the Covid, it was pretty darn good.

The official house was 71,000 gamers, all of whom I suspect were on the exhibit floor at the same time as I was. The convention had spread out even more than the last time I attended, which surprised me, and worked into every nook and cranny of the surrounding hotels (and they are building more hotels in Indianapolis, which bodes well for future conventions). I had been invited to sit of several panels for the 50th anniversary of D&D (Here are some videos), and helped out with the Writer's Symposium as well. And I picked up a lot of stuff, including huge blisters on both feet from all the walking around (and Covid).

I will confess I packed a large suitcase, half-empty, just to account for all the things I was intending to bring back. I also sent a copy of Shadowdark to a colleague who asked for it, and it was a good thing, because they sold out of the last of their print run at the con itself. 

OK, so what do we have? 

Gen Con Program Booklet by Peter Adkison and many diverse and talented hands, 170-page magazine format. This bears out a call-out because of how much it shows the depth and diversity of Gen Con as it celebrated 50 years of D&D. Stuffed with ads from exhibitors but also showing the maps of all the locations, it covers the history of D&D, the guests of honor (I'm on page 91), the writer's symposium, the costume contest (one of my old D&D group from college is on page 125), and all sorts of subcons and special interest groups. An excellent memento of the convention.

Legions of Carcosa by John Harness, Kira Magrann, Sarah Saltiel and Monica Valentinelli, with Daniel Kwan, Pelgrane Press, 200-page hardbound, 2023, Gen Con, and Black Star Magic,  by Robin D. Laws, Sarah Saltiel, Gareth Ryder-Hanrahan, and Ruth Tillman, Pelgrane Press, 184-page digest-sized hardbound, 2023 Gen Con . Pelgrane's The Yellow King is one of the more intriguing games I have in my collection and one of the more challenging. Its system is a simplified version of their Gumshoe system, which uses condition cards as opposed to more traditional hit points and the like, yet it remains a bit of a mental climb for me. The setting itself is four settings based on the work of Robert Chambers, who in the 1890s created an alternate 1920s with a dictatorship in America with suicide booths in the major cities. The game itself has four separate time periods to it - Paris in the 1890s, during the Continental Wars, and post-war, post-dictatorship US, and a modern era. So all this is background. Legions of Carcosa is a monster book, Black Star Magic is a book of spells. Nice additions, though I know I'll have to do a bit more digging to see how they can be implemented. 

The Fifth Imperative by Robin D. Laws, Pelgrane Press, 192-page softbound digest, 2022, Gen Con  Also from the Pelgrane Press and also dealing with the alternate history of The Yellow King. This one is set in the period following the dictatorship, and involves politics and otherworldly conspiracy. I really like the lateral development and fiction books that Robin D. Laws and Pelgrane put out, and usually don't see enough of them through my standard purchasing venues. So this will likely end up as a "plane book" to be read en route to conventions.  

Hamlet's Hit Points by Robin D. Laws, Gameplaywright Press, 196-page softbound digest, 2010, 2015, Gen Con. This is the third time I have purchased this book. On the two previous occasions, I have recommended it others, loaned it out, and never saw it again. It is an interesting examination and mapping of beats and pacing within narrative stories. For Laws, such beats are instances with specific purposes, be them - Dramatic, Commentary, Anticipation, and the connective tissue of Pipe, and combine to create Hope and/or Fear in the audience. He then uses this analysis to examine Hamlet, Casablanca, and Dr. No, under this lens. It's an interesting approach, and the only thing I can ding it with is the each beat is considered as a single unit - a particularly positive beat gets the same weight as a negative beat, so that the progress of beats is downward, regardless of resolution. But that's just a quibble. I'm glad I got another copy of this. No, you can't borrow it. 

Pendragon Core Rulebook by Greg Stafford, with input from myriad others, Chaosium Inc./Moon Design Publications, 254-page hardback, 2024, Gen Con. I'm a fan of Chaosium's games - I've played a lot of Call of Cthulhu. I've played almost no Runequest (but love the lore). Pendragon falls between those two poles, where I've done a bit as both player and gamemaster. And so a goal of this trip was to pick up the new version (I would have also picked up some Miskatonic Library volumes, if they had any on-hand, just so you know). The latest version is polished and is incredibly readable. The downside is that this is primarily a Player's Guide, with a lot of good information for players. For a GM, it would more of an uphill stroll, and hopefully there is a GM resource in the works. In the mean time, I would still likely spring the Starter Set on my players.

Kaiju Preservation Society by John Scalzi, Tor Books, 266 page Trade paperback, Gen Con. So what's the deal with including all these books here? Well, they were part of the Gen Con swag I returned from Indy with. This volume was a reward for helping out the Writer's Symposium, spending part of an afternoon stuffing swag bags for the attendees. A good group activity. The book itself deals with a slacker taking on a temp job that takes him to another dimension filled with giant monsters. That's about all I know about it right now. Kate's read it on Kindle (I have a hard time concentrating on devices when I have other options to engage with) and says its pretty good. It becomes another plane-trip book. 

Miseries and Misfortunes: Roleplaying in 1648 by Luke Crane, Burning Wheel, six softbound digest volumes for 852-pages total, 2022-2023, Gen Con. This is the sort of thing I love at Gen Con - finding something I had never heard of before, something that is much tougher in this Internet Age. So I was delighted I found the six volumes of this game at the Burning Wheel booth and snapped them up. The gamer takes place in the post-Richelieu, post- Louis XIII era of the Musketeers Cycle, where you had the underaged Louis XIV, the Queen Regent, and a noble revolt known as the Fronde. While it notes its descent from Basic D&D, it has morphed from those early designs into a completely different animal with a lot of different mechanics. The books themselves are 1) a system book for game mechanics, 2) a character creation book (which should be read first so you know what they're talking about in book 1, 3) a book on magic, 4) and expansion to books 1-3, 5) an adventure set in Catalonia, and 6) a MASSIVE book on Paris itself. So yeah, I'm pretty pleased with myself.

Religion in the American West: Belief, Violence, and Resilience from 1800 to Today.  Edited by Jessica Lauren Nelson, University of New Mexico Press, 196-page hardbound, 2023. So at Gen Con, my hosts put me up at the Fairfield, which was one of a collection of interconnected Marriot-branded lodgings. My room faced the Eiteljorg Museum of American Museums and Western Art. And since I had arrived a day early, I actually had the chance to see something in the city where I was. And it is an excellent museum of Native American and European Western art, and I would recommend it just on the basis of that. But the special exhibit was on Religion in the American West, and covered both the stuff most folk know about (The Mormons, the Spanish missions), as well as lot of things that tended to get pushed to the back (Presbyterians and their influence on the Erie Canal, the rivalry between Catholic priests and Protestant ministers among the Native Americans). It was a good exhibit, and I went back on Sunday to get the book (which was half-price since that was the last day of the exhibit). Look forward to reading it. 

Fifty Years of Dungeons & Dragons, Edited by Premeet Sidhu, Marcus Carter, and Jose P. Zagal, the MIT Press, 372-page Trade paperback, 2024, Gen Con. Purchased at the MIT press booth, no less. The 50th anniversary of D&D has encouraged a spurt of commentary and analysis. This volume is a collection of essays from a number of talented individuals. I've been reading this is bits and pieces, and there are parts I find engaging, and those that I give the hairy eyeball and raised eyebrow at. The final collection probably should have had one more pass through it by a well-intentioned grognard or two to catch the nits. One obvious nit? For a document that pushes cultural accuracy in many of its essays, the cover shows two Viking-types fighting what I would guess to be a Lindwyrm. And the Vikings have wings on their helmets. Its a minor thing, but triggers that eye-roll thing. 

The Egg of the World: A Guide to Gaming in the World of Tekumel by Victor Raymond, 256 page ringbound draft, 2022. Gift of the Author. It is well known that I am a fan of Empire of the Petal Throne, but recognize that the very alienness and completeness of the world is a major stumbling block for new players. There's a lot to grok - no only all the strange names and alien creatures, but the non-Western-European concepts of rigid class and clan. The original EPT had 11 pages of backstory for the world at the start, before digging into it properly. So this volume sorts out a lot of this for the referee, hitting the important points of what makes a Tekumel campaign, as well a host of scenarios, adventures, factions and patrons that can be grist for your mill. This is a referee's source material to get your players into EPT without overloading them, and allow them to experience the world as opposed to confronting them with a big data dump. I'm looking forward to seeing this in its final form. 

Questionable Content by Jeph Jacques, TopatoCo Books, 592 page trade paperback, Gen Con. Look to the blogroll to the right, and you'll see QC listed. And I check it out on weekdays. At Gen Con, I hunted down Jacques among the teaming thousands and myriad booths. He had already sold out of Volumes 1 and 2, but I bought Vol 3 and he included a drawing of Hannalore (I have friends who are artists, but it still lifts my heart when someone does that). Anyway, Questionable Content has been around for twenty+ years, and deals with the relationships of Marten and Faye, who were a couple back at the beginning, then broke up and dated others, then broke up with those others a few more times and now are in pretty stable relationships. This is of the era when Hannalore, who grew up on a space station, shows up more, Marten still has a band, and has such things a whether Penelope, the new employee, is really the superhero Pizza Girl and the threat of the the VespAvenger and her transforming robot scooter. The writing is smart, the characters are intelligent, and the strip remains excellent. The strip has evolved as it deals more with robots and SF elements, and there are a host of characters that rotate in and out, sort of like Doonesbury. I really like the strip, and you can rabbit hole through the archives if you don't want a physical copy. So check it out. 

Neoclassical Geek Revival Second Edition Acidic Rulebook (it is acidic instead of basic, get it?), by Zzarchov Kowolski, Neoclassical Games, 170 page hardback digest, Gen Con.  I'd seen mentions of this product elsewhere, and was delighted to see it with a booth (low-tech and high pressure), so I picked up the core book and a couple support products. I expected another OSR-clone hewing close to the original little booklets, but instead discovered that they took the core concepts and headed for the exits, changing them over time to produce something completely unique. The tone of the books are that same jaunty in-your-face attitude of the guy across the gaming table explaining his house rules, but everything has changed dramatically, such that you're learning a completely new game. The part that is most like original D&D is the presence of a GM (mentioned briefly) and the 1st edition tendency to create a new system whenever confronted with a new challenge. It's really impressive. I also picked up Havenvale (16 pages), a tidy little starting area in a mountain valley, and The Price of Evil (32 pages), a way to create haunted houses with a deck of cards. 

Whew! And that's the lot. And more have shown up, but we'll deal with them later. So, more. Later.

Life In the Time of the Virus: Redux

Chair Car by Edward Hopper, 1965

 I've come down with Covid again, and that's been my excuse for the past three weeks.

"You want to do lunch?" "Sorry, Covid"

"How's the deadline coming along?" "Sorry, Covid"

"Have you mowed the lawn recently?" "Sorry, Covid"

"Did you know your shed was on fi-" "Sorry, Covid."

I picked up this lovely strain at GenCon, and until I tested positive thought it was a bad cold (Protip: It is NEVER just a bad cold). GenCon was a textbook spreader event - 71,000 people, a minimum of masks, and a huge, packed exhibit hall. The resulting debacle swept through the creative community, taking out a lot of the professional class (and those that evaded it came back with some other form of con crud). One of the booths blamed a particular creative as "Patient Zero" as they showed up from the earlier San Diego con already infected, and had to bail, but I think there was more than enough opportunity from everyone else who was slowly shuffling through the show floor.

Despite that, it was a very pleasant convention. I saw a lot of friends (and to my knowledge infected none of them), and overcommitted to helping out on a number of panels (Saturday I had five panels and book signing, so that when I felt the first symptoms on the flight back Sunday, I was kinda expecting some bad news). I was on the waning side of my latest vaccination, though, and while I kept masked in crowded, public areas, there was more than enough opportunities outside of the exhibit hall to pick up something nasty. 

The culprit was likely the new hotnesses in the Covid family - FliRT, an Omicron variant, or LB.1, which was a related variant (We're still giving them cute names). Those are the two big contenders right now. And just so you know, there's a spike right now in the virus from checking wastewater (though not from hospital admissions or deaths). It seems milder but still miserable. I rolled through a cascade of cold symptoms (head, throat, chest, doubling back to the sinuses), stuffiness, lack of appetite, headaches, and exhaustion. And that last one was the worst - a continual mental fuzziness (brainfog) that still has not fully dissipated. I've tested negative after about a week of the worst of it, but symptoms can persist for about two weeks afterwards. Lovely.

So for the time being, I'm doing a lot of Ricola and rest. Working from home, I've been able to take naps and then return to the task. I consider myself fortunate, but send out the warnings to others who have been dealing with this. In about a week I head off to Grand Rapids for another (smaller) convention. And I'm working on making sure I don't bring anything back from that on.

More later,

Book: A Conventional Murder

 Murder at the ABA by Isaac Asimov, Fawcett Crest paperback edition, 1976

Provenance: Half-Price books down in Tukwilla, picked up before a trip to the MisCon convention in Missoula, Montana. When I fly, I tend to read old paperbacks. They are small, light, and, if forgotten on the airplane, easily replaced. They also, I believe, are slowly going extinct, replaced in the first-run bookstores with larger trade paperbacks. So there is a whiff of nostalgia and slowly decaying pulp about them. I like 'em.

This particular volume belonged to a John Braschler, and had as a bookmark a ticket to see Doctor Strange in 3D at the Pacific Science Center on 11/19/2016. Add to that a bookmark from Half-Price, and a sticker from SKS Props, another guest of the convention, given to me by owner Steve on the plane trip back from Missoula, Montana, so the physical book has its own history.

It is kind of strange, reading a book about a murder at a convention over Memorial Day weekend, while I was traveling to and from a convention over Memorial Day weekend. Such is life.

But what about the book? Well, I didn't care for it much, but decided to bull through it (and then write about it). Another advantage of old spinner-rack paperbacks. Even if you don't like 'em, you can still power through them.

Review: Isaac Asimov is known primarily for his SF and nonfiction science, but wrote mysteries as well. His best-known were about the Black Widower Club, where a bunch of writers gather for dinner, are presented with a  mystery, cast about options and opinions, then have the waiter solve it for them (usually the mystery revolves around someone mis-hearing or misunderstanding something). And in this case, Asimov was hired by Doubleday to write a full mystery novel set at the American Bookseller's Association, which was held in 1975 in New York City (he never identifies the city in the book, but Asimov says he attended the 1975 convention to pick up local color). 

And I attended ABAs and ALAs (American Library Association) about a decade later, when they had reached their apex such that the attending editors would bring along their assistant editors as sherpas to carry out all the free books offered. And Asimov gets the ambience and panels and celebrities and hurley-burley pretty correct. 

Supposedly Asimov based his main character, Darius Just, on fellow writer Harlan Ellison (who he dedicates the book to). And it's a pity that he didn't use more Ellison, who carved his own trail through SF as a brilliant writer, a complete mensch, and a raging pain in the butt, all at the same time. Darius Just is simply a height-deficient midlist writer, successful with a bad movie adaptation, as was Ellison in the mid-70s. That portrayal lacks the fire, irritation, ego, and lyrical verbal swagger of the original version's public persona, even in those days. Asimov's Ellison-clone is a wan, fatalistic figure who believes in the immovability of fate in addition to his own personal culpability in that fate. That's a shame.

Oh, OK, the plot. Darius Just is a semi-popular midlist writer asked to do an interview at the ABA by a friend. Also at the convention is Giles Devore, who Just mentored. Devore's first novel was a huge hit. Devore has become a complete jerk, his infantile obsessive-compulsive nature offending all around him. Just finds him dead in the bathtub and we're off to the races. And because Devore is so obsessive-compulsive, Just suspects murder.

And to be honest it plods a bit.  Mind you, Asimov's fiction tends towards the bloodless - people talking and thinking as opposed to people doing. And that style is evident here as Just rolls through suspects and prospects throughout the book. Asimov takes his time getting to the point - we are about a third through the book before the deserving victim finally croaks.

In addition, the book is filled with liberated 70s sexism, that Playboy-era mindset where equality meant that women had the right to have sex with you. Darius Just comes off a horndog, and Asimov (who writes himself into the novel, working on a book called Murder at the ABA - very meta) self-identifies as a lecherous flirt (and is praised for it). Add to that the fact that almost every female character in the book is described is sexual terms (bustlines and body-shape are a major factor here). And victim Devore has his own personal kinks. The end result is, as kids today say, cringe. 

The mystery is mechanically OK. I tagged the murderer early on, primarily in terms of the book's pacing (non-important suspects drop away from the narrative, but the true murderer keeps popping up). I also tweaked to the key clue. But I missed the full rationalization for the crime, in part because writing technology has changed from the mid-seventies.

Ultimately, the book comes off as dated and my eyes rolled many times in the reading - Stan! was traveling with me, and noted that I would read a few pages, then close the book and look into the middle distance for a short time before returning to the text. It's not great Asimov, but more on the level of his other mysteries. I would've liked to see Harlan Ellison as a main character as opposed to this dry-veined doppelganger. He'd have been an interesting detective.

More later, 

Recent Arrivals - North Texas Edition

 Along with the usual bunch of new arrivals from Kickstarters and convention purchases, this write-up includes candidates for the North Texas RPG Con's Three Castles award, which I and others have been asked to judge. As a result, a big box of stuff arrived that I spent several week-ends pawing through.

The excellent North Texas RPG Convention and its awards are very much OSR, and for the awards I judge primarily on that basis. But because I am judging, I dig a little deeper into the works than I normally do with my other  "Recent Arrivals" entries. The judging has rules which stress heavily originality and presentation as well as textural content, so I'm looking at that as well in the final judging. But it also means that I may like a product for one of the applicable categories, but find that it comes up short in the other areas. Such is the nature of judging.

Looking at the candidates for the Three Castles, we have:

Splinters of Faith by Gary Schotter and Jeff Harkness, Frog God Games, 454 page hardback, 2022. This massive campaign adventure was originally ten earlier adventures which are now reunited into one thick volume. High quality, lotta maps, lotta handouts, including postcards (!). Set in the Lost Lands, the adventure is a grand tour of various temples and holy sites, and its through-line involves restoring the Scepter of Faiths in order to face the final baddie. The adventure starts with missing chickens (hey, it's first level) and ending up around 14th level in battle with a death-priest of Orcus. 

Shadowdark, by Kelsey Dione, The Arcane Library 326-page digest-sized hardback, 2023.  This is the one in corner with the silver beholder/eye tyrant/sphere of eyes on it. I talked about it here. And after doing a deep dive on it, it pretty much stands as I originally described it - if you turned 5th edition into an Old School product, this would be it, with a lot of cool table rules. I liked it a lot. My copy from the review package went to Stan!, who is running in a campaign that uses the game.

Three Curses for Sister Saren by Mike Pike and Levi Combs, Planet X Games, 54-page hardback,  2023. Previous Planet X releases tended to keep its tongue firmly in its cheek, but this one is actually a pretty solid, straightforward adventure. Here's the backstory - In order to defeat bandit raiders, the town leaders brought in demons. In order to get rid of the demons, they trapped them in the body of a pious cleric, chopped her up, and separated the parts. Now the body parts are leaking demons, with worse to come. Tidy little adventure where the players have to figure out exactly WHAT happened and HOW to deal with it, and combines both a linear plot with a sandbox setting. 

Megadungeon Monster Manual by Greg Gillespie, OSR, Greg Gillespie. I've run through Gillespie's dungeons with Steve Winter as my DM - Barrowmaze and Forbidden Caverns of Archaia. Therefore I've met some of these beasties first-hand, and suffered accordingly. This compiles the monsters from those books, along with the other books in the series. Art is at the original Fiend Folio level, which means it is pretty darn good. Monsters that have appeared in core (1st edition D&D) books get some tweaks for the OSR derivatives of the Open Gaming License, (Morale in particularly nice add). Excellent for those looking at the old-school monster books.

Dark Places & Demogorgons 1980s Retro Roleplaying Game Eric Bloat and Josh Palmer, 304 page digest hardback,  Bloat Games, 2022. System uses the Old School Rules from Necromantic Gnome. There is a subgenre in RPGs called Kids on Bikes. The ET movie was a good example (they played D&D after all), but it really bloomed with Tales of the Loop and of course, Stranger Things on Netflix. It is about High School Students (think Buffy) combating the weird stuff in a small town in Kentucky. Class-based, with the classes like Party Animal, Geek, Final Girl, and Most Excellent Dude (or Dudette). Digs deep into the Reagan-Era 80s, complete with satanic panic. Even has its own Upside-down, called the Otherside. Oddly, I am not sufficiently nostalgic for the era, but it is a good take on the media presentations of the times (When MTV actually played music videos).

Zeta Complex: Mankind's Lost Hope A Dark Humor Setting by Ben Burns, New Comet Games, 102-page digest Softbound, 2023. This one actually bothered me. On one hand, it uses Savage Worlds, but on the other hand it is little more than a reskin of the classic Paranoia from West End games. The Alpha Complex is the Zeta Complex, the Computer is the Authority, the Trouble-Shooters are now Operatives and you still get multiple clones. The art is cartoons plus last-year's Midjourney AI - dark and muddy. The end product actually makes me want to dig out the original game. 

Whisper & Venom by Zach Glazar, John Hammerle, and Edwin Nagy, 132-page hardback with fold-out map, Necromancer Games, 2023. This is a nice small-town setting - a small community filled with internal plots and conflicts, threatened by mutated goblins. One main adventure, a couple additional ones. It has nice maps, but could use some tags on them to make the GM's life easier (where IS that Monastery? - oh, there, in the far corner).

AND THE AWARD GOES TO: I'll tell you when I find out. [Update: Shadowdark, which is nice. It was my top choice, and my top choice does not always win. Congratulations to Kelsey Dione and her team].

Meanwhile, some other things have crossed over the transom:

The Restless Dead by William Wandless, 24 page staplebound zine,, and A Puppethand's Guide to the Rainy City by Anred D. Devenney, 16 page saddlestitched zine, Superhero Necromancer Press, 2024, Kickstarter.. I think I've mentioned that I am a fan of zines, and the Rainy City series has been exceptionally good. The central conceit centers on the last city of a flooded world, which has a surprising amount of puppet shows and an unsurprising amount of ghosts. Presentation is sharp, the art evokes old woodcuts, and vibe is very much like Jack Vance's Dying Earth stories. I like them. 

Eat The Reich by Grant Howitt (words) and Will Kirkby (art), 72-page full-color squarebound book, and an  big envelope filled with stuff - a character and map sheet pack, stickers, patches, bookmarks, and postcards, Rowan, Rook, and Decard, 2023, Kickstarter. You are a team of vampire commandos infiltrating occupied Paris to find Hitler and drink his blood. That's it. A lot of necromantic Nazi-punching. This is very much an art game, where the presentation overwhelms the mechanics, and has all the hall-marks of edgy production values - dutch angles for blocks of text, reversed-out text headers, and red on black backgrounds (did White Wolf teach us nothing?) A lot of DMing advice as well, which boils down to "Yeah, you're running Nazi's, but don't feel too bad when they die. Messily." Very much Magnificent Bastards meets Dracula. Surprised not more people are upset about this. 

Cthulhu Awakens Mythos Roleplaying Across The Weird Century by a veritable host of talented people (sorry, 13 credits are a bit much for even me), 288-hardback, Green Ronin, 2024, Kickstarter. Kickstarter version is the one with the gold foil cover. Production values are up to GR's standard excellence, and the system is their AGE (Adventure Gaming Engine) system, 3d6 where one die is a different color and called a stunt die, which determines degree of success and stunt points available (stunt points are special effects, actions, and bonuses). A lot of recent games have recognized the hard-baked bigotry of HP Lovecraft, but this one has gone the furthest in pulling it completely away from the original creator - The Elder Gods are now Outsiders, Insanity is replaced by Alienation, and the text pulls the mythos out of Lovecraft's racist clutches. The Outsiders as a result are truly uncaring cosmic beings, which pushes the nihilistic nature of Lovecraft's cosmology nicely in a new way. Most of the action (in two attached adventures) shows that their minions have their own agendas as opposed to being malicious for the sake of maliciousness, and the destruction they wreck being often just collateral damage. Its an excellent take on the mythos, and again, I'm surprised that few people have noticed. The Kickstarter came with the Dreadcrawls zine, Issue Zero (by Jesse Heinig, 28 pages), which sets the stage for Cthuloid hotspots, but can be used with any system.

Eberron, Rising from the Last War, Gold Edition, by Jon Ciccolini, Matthew Lillard, Bill Rehor, Charlie Rehor, Paul Shapiro, Big honking 2" deep box of stuff, 2020,  Beadle & Grimm,, Gary Con. This was a leftover from Gary Con, where they offered it as a freebie for folk working the con, and I was interested in what went into a B&G version. The answer is a lot. They carved the original E:RftLW hardback into 6 booklets, making them easier to pass around the table. DM Screen, campaign maps, battle maps, player handouts, magic item cards, oversized Encounter cards, some Bonus Encounters, and Pre-gen characters. rub-on dragonmark tattoos, a metal feather token, and some plastic dragonshards. The end result carries a LOT of weight to it. Intriguing, but the hardback would probably meet my needs well enough.

Vecna, Eve of Ruin by Amanda Hammond (lead designer) and others, 256-pages and full-sized map. 2024. Wizards of the Coat, purchase at Miscon. Presentation values are the industry-leader and industry-standard. This is a "Crisis on All The Planes" adventure for the very high level adventurers. Vecna is trying to reboot the multiverse and you need to stop him. The adventure is a grand-tour of the old TSR settings - Greyhawk, Dragonlance, Forgotten Realms, Spelljammer, Eberron, Ravenloft and the Outer Planes all get a chapter (though not the later settings like Theros, Ravinca, or Strixhaven). The Rod of Seven Parts provides the McGuffin for the through-line, and there are more than a few thing I created that show up (insert Leo DiCaprio meme of pointing at the screen here when they name-check Habbakuk). It is interesting, and I'd like to see how it would perform in play at high levels. It also feels like the last product in the line, sort of a send-off to the earlier edition and that Post 5.5/6.0/Beyond D&D could abandon the entire hardback-book route and go entirely on-line. But maybe that's just me. Then again, if it happens, you read it hear first.

More later, 

Recent Arrivals: Gary Con Edition

Buckle in, chums. This is going to be a long one. I blame Gary Con.

Gary Con itself is a great little convention in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin celebrating the life and works of Gary Gygax. It is ringleadered by Gary's son Luke, his family, and a host of extremely talented people. It is one of the best-organized small conventions I have attended. Right now it is straining at the seams as we had a not-so-small 4000 people at the Grand Geneva (once upon a time the Playboy Resort) at the edge of town. It is a great little con, and it continues to impress. 

A few things on this list showed up since last time, but with the convention a whole slew of new products came in. Part of this is because I was a guest of the convention, and as such had a swag bag of stuff (thanks, folks!). And part of it is because there are good small publishers that I only find at conventions like Gary Con.

Let's do the Gary Con material first.

Gary Con Event Guide #16, Luke Gygax, the Gygax family, and a host of talented people, 56-page saddle-stitched magazine format, 2024.  A gift from a fan (whose name I missed - I was sitting doing autographs, admired the book (which I had not seen up to that point) and he presented me a copy).  I offer this as exhibit A for the organizational skills behind Gary Con. It is an impressive volume in heavy stock, with ALL the guests of honor, maps of the Grand Geneva done in 1st Edition style, adverts for various sponsors, and a cover by Erol Otus. I remain impressed.

Expert Level Dice Set, Gaxx Worx, Seven polyhedral dice (well five polyhedrals and two percentage dice, to be accurate), plus a white crayon, swag bag at Gary Con. I'll be honest, this really, really made me smile, and I am SO torn between the temptation of leaving it intact in the packaging or taking it out and PLAYING with the dice. Part of that delight, for the younger folk here, is that early on, we didn't ink the dice, but instead provided a white crayon for the players to fill in the numbers themselves. It's a heady whiff of nostalgia. Some folk were selling these off Ebay after the event, but you're patient, you probably can get them for a more reasonable price here.

Gary Con DM Screen, four-panel plasticized DM Screen with paper inserts, swag bag, I assume this is another Gaxx Worx project, but to be honest I don't have anything on the item to indicate an owner. The panels have cartoons on them involving Demogorgon, an Aboloth, and (I think) Acerak on them. The interior (removable) sheets have useful information from 5E. It reminds me that I shlep my ancient and decaying AD&D 1e DM Screen around because it contains n all the to-hit and saving throw charts from the era. This, I'll admit, I like.

D&D 50th Anniversary Placard by Tim "Ollie" Cahoon. TSR Veteran Ollie Calhoun had these printed (3D Plastic) up and was passing them out at the TSR reunion party (which he also organized). I just wanted to show it off and say thank you to Ollie - great work!

Echoes from Fomalhaut by Gabor Lux and others, 4 issues, First Hungarian D20 Society, Various page length (40-54 pages), 'Zine  digest format, 2018-2022. Purchased from the Black Blade booth at Gary Con (as an aside, the Black Blade is exactly the sort of place I frequent at conventions - carrying stuff I can't find at the Friendly Local Shop).  I like 'zines, They tend to be handmade, personal takes on the chosen gaming system. This collection comes from the First Hungarian D20 Society, translated into English. And these 'zines are pretty cool - each one contains a couple dungeons, some additional articles, and a separate B/W map. Very artisanal - the maps are hand-drawn. I picked up issues 1-3 and issue 10, and will seek to fill out the rest of the collection at future cons.

Cosmology of Role-Playing Games by Alyssa Faden, Cave Geek Art and Frog God Games 24" by 36" poster. Purchased at the Frog God Games booth. OK, in the picture above, it is UNDERNEATH everything else, but you can see it in all its glory here. Faden has researched 1300-some RPGS and laid them out in a timeline with TSR as the big bang in the center, and the other games spreading out to the right and left over time. The end collections are further gathered by publisher (The White Wolf wing or the West End arm of the galaxy). There was a larger version hanging on the wall at Gary Con, which quickly became the "Where's Waldo" experience for all the game designers. 

I Choose to Rise by Dr. Artika Tyner and Merle M. Rasmussen, 52-card deck, Planting People Growing Justice Leadership Institute, 2022, gift from the designer. Long ago and far away Merle created Top Secret for TSR, and recently has been more active in game design (with, among other things, a new version of Top Secret). I Choose to Rise is a point-scoring card game based around Black history, and the Rise in the title reflect the suits (Respect, Integrity, Self-Awareness, and Engagement). The cards themselves feature famous Black leaders, athletes, and entertainers. 

DM Offerings - Ran a few games at Gary Con, and some of the players brought small gifts for the DM. These are appreciated (thank you) but definitely not required. Andy was in two games, and brought dice each time (including some nice ruby jeweled dice), while Sypros gave me a small bag containing a Waterdhavian coin and a Magic Card for a character I created that I never knew had been turned into a card (Jodah, Archmage Eternal). The card's flavor text a pull from one of my books. Thank you both.

Preludes to Adventure: In the Days of Our Youth by Jon Cook, Renaissance Tactical Studies, 24 page squarebound, 2022, Prologue to the Story: Lambethfield Faire by Jon Cook, Renaissance Tactical Studies, 36-pages, 2023, Gift from the Author. Another gift to the DM, but this one has more text. This is what the kids today would call "Session Zero" stuff - the adventures you have before you start adventuring. Days of Our Youth provide four intros to 1 or 2 characters each, while Lambethfield Faire holds some springboards for adventure. The text is straightforward, the format is open, and while the project uses art in the public domain, it then credits the original sources. That's nice.

Shadowdark by Kelsey Dione,  The Arcane Library 326-page digest-sized hardback, 2023, Black Blade Booth at Gary Con. Longtime TSR Vet Steve Winter clued me in on this, and I saw a LOT of this being played at Gary Con itself. I'm not surprised. Imagine taking 5th Edition and doing an OSR version of it. Four classes, three alignments, three type of armor. Add some modern tweaks - Ancestries instead of Races (but the standard Elf-Dwarf-Halfling mix is there). Advantages and Disadvantages. And some interesting wrinkles - Initiative starts with high roll and goes clockwise. A good chunk of the book is monster stats and random encounter tables. The book itself is clear and heavy - it's the one with the weird beholder on the cover in the picture - not putting the name on the cover is a thing these days. Picked it up with a Shadowdark Zine Cursed Scroll (Also Kelsey Dione, The Arcane Library, 64-page digest), which in the tradition of early D&D zines has more classes, spells, and an adventure. 

Night Shift: Veterans of the Supernatural Wars Quick Start Rules and Adventure by Derek Stoelting, Elf Lair Games, 32-page saddle-stitched booklet, 2019, Either in the swag bag or from the designer of the Night Shift game, I'm really not certain at this point. This is not only an introduction to the world of Night Shift (Which feels very Buffy the Vampire Slayer/Forever Knight in tone) but for the OGRES system (Oldschool Generic Roleplaying Engine System) which is close enough to D&D that it includes an OGL statement. Classes include thing like Sage, Veteran, and Chosen One. Looks interesting.

Wildspace Magazine: Rock of Bral, David "Big Mac" Shepheard, Editor and a variety of authors, The Piazza,  2024(?), 64-page perfect bound,  Free magazine but presented to me by Lee at one of my signings. This is pretty impressive - heavy stock, full color, cover that echoes the Spelljammer module covers of yore. The insides echo with classic magazine fare - short fiction, locations, NPCs, and an adventure. Neat stuff, and great to see that people are still creating and developing for this corner of fantasy reality.

So, what about things that were NOT Gary Con related?

Candela Obscura by Spenser Starke and Rowan Hall, Darrington Press/Illuminated Worlds, 204 page hardbound, 2023, Purchase from MOX Boarding House in Bellevue. This is part of a Critical Role series of live-plays (which I haven't seen). and was curious about what sort of system they would create free of the shackles of traditional D&D-style fantasy. I need to do more reading, but it does feel more like a descendent of Blades in the Dark, with clocks and roles, but some wrinkles like dice tricks (if a die is Gilded or not). The concept is a small group of professional paranormal investigators in a fantasy turn-of-the-twentieth city investigating the paranormal. Sort of a heroic horror genre. I'd want to read a bit more of it (There's a lot of unique terms to wrap my brain around) before taking it out for a spin.

Dr. Grordbort's Scientific Adventure Violence, by T.G. Crackle, Brian Saliba, and Zach Theiler, Exalted Funeral/Stardog Limited Partnership, 332-page hardback, 2024, Kickstarter. This is a Space-1889ish version of 5E based on the art and designs of Greg Broadmore of Weta Workshop. Broadmore has a lot of weapons, ships and other steampunk/raypunk designs, and they built a campaign setting around them. They addressed the inherent colonialism of the era by identifying the colonial leaders as being asshats, a variation of the "Are we the baddies?" trope, and while not pushing the PCs towards being rebels, they definitely give a head-nod to it. OK, that's cool. More irritating is the fact that there is no character sheet in the book, even though credit is given to the character sheet designer and have made some mods to how being on a different planet affects your 5E stats (It is the PDF material, but that's not helpful to people picking it up at the local hobby shop). A separate booklet, repeating all the information on how devices malfunctions, came with the Kickstarter, but that's missing a character sheet as well.

Aquellaire: The Demonic Medieval Role-Playing Game by Ricard Ibanez, translated by Cabell Venable and Lester Smith, 568-page hardback, Nocturnal Media, 2015, purchased at Apparition Books, Renton. I found this massive tome at Apparition Books in Renton, which is a small one-person operation with an curated collection heavily into the occult and mythology. The owner has recently expanded to the tune of adding several additional shelves on top of his original collection, and has started carrying used RPGs as well. Anyway, Aquellaire is a translated  Spanish RPG that set in the Iberian peninsula in the 14th and 15th centuries, before its unification into what we think of as Spain. Players are demon-hunters, and the huge book is filled with data on demons, spells, and the social world of pre-Empiric Spain. Physically, it is a solid book, though my ancient eyes could do without the Italicized/Bold text peppered through the text, and the Gothic section headers. 

The Blessed and the Blasphemous by Francis Acquarone, Patrick Chandler, DanBass, Jason Sheets, and Jesse Covner, 340 page hardback, Sons of the Singularity, 2023, Kickstarter. Another mammoth text, this one wrapped around a single adventure for Call of Cthulhu from Chaosium. You actually have to do some digging in the text to figure out exactly what is going on - Several groups in pre-WWII Morocco are trying to bring back a Mythos entity. Your job is to stop them. A lot on the cultural and political situation of the region, much of it repeated elsewhere in sidebars. Kickstarter came with a Boxed Campaign Dossier Set that includes handouts, character sheet, a GM Screen, and a "Clue board" for organizing the play.

And as I was finishing this up a large package arrived from the North Texas RPG Con. I've agreed to be one of their judges for the Three Castles Award this year. So the next writeup should not be until June, when the convention occurs. So look out for that one.

More later, 

Recent Arrivals (North Texas Bonus Round)

 There are lot of hardbacks in this particular collection, but I did not buy the bulk of them. I've been a judge for several years for the Three Castles Awards, presented at the North Texas RPG Con. NTRPG is a really nice con dedicated to "old-school gaming" - earlier editions of D&D (and all of its retro-clones) and other classic games. They send me the candidates I and several other judges make our decisions under a precise set of guidelines, and the winner was announced at the most recent NTRPG Con. Anyway, my opinions here are untethered by those guidelines, and as such are my own. But let's do the ones that are NOT NTRPG candidates first.

Everyday Heroes (Sigfried Trent, Chris "Goober" Ramley, D. Todd Scott, Evil Genius Games, 464-page hardbound) This was an "author's" copy from the publisher. I worked on this project as a Design Consultant, helped them staff up, and looked over the various sections when they were in development. Even so, I was stunned by how HUGE this book turned out. It is a spiritual descendant of D20 Modern, and this particular edition echoes the original on the cover. Physically, it is a beautiful rulebook. Content-wise, it is incredibly playable. Recommended.

Regency Cthulhu: Dark Designs in Jane Austen's England (Andrew Peregrine, Lynne Hardy and Friends, Chaosium Inc. 224-page hardback) I could not find the anywhere from my local hobby stores, and ended up making a trek down to Olympic Cards & Comics down in Lacey with Stan! on one of our days off. There is a Cthulhu project for every era and genre, and this one drills down on the Austenian era (1811-1820) when George IV served as king for the increasingly crazy George III. The volume details changes to the skill and occupations for that era to the standard Call of Cthulhu (CoC) 7th edition rules, and the importance of social credit and standing as a tool for roleplaying. There's a typical country manor and village and a couple adventures. Presentation is up to Chaosium's usual standards.

Rivers of London the Roleplaying Game (Paul Fricker, Lynne Hardy, and Friends, Based on the novels by Gen Aaronovitch, Chaosium Inc. 400-page hardback). Also a result of the Olympic trip, I was surprised to find this one in the wild as well. I've never read Aaronovitch's books, but the Lovely Bride has and thinks they are good, as they are modern urban fantasy dealing with a London police department that deals with the supernatural. The system is a simplified 7th Edition Call of Cthulhu. Presentation is good, but I'm not a fan of the 3D models in some of the illos. Wondering if I can get the Lovely Bride to play.

Ruins of the Lost Realm (Gareth Hanrahan. Free League, 120-page hardback). One more from Olympic, this was a whim pickup. Have been cruising through The One Ring RPG, and want to take it out for a spin, but wanted to see the support project. Free League makes some of the best-looking products on the shelves today. This one deals with Arnor, a chunk of Middle Earth unvisited in any of the books. Pulls what is known from the trilogy and fills in the blank spots. Uses Tharbad as a launching point for adventures. The game does not do dungeons so much as sites and places of interest with general descriptions. Looks interesting if you don't want to be tripping over too many trademarked characters.

Dragonlance: Shadow of the Dragon Queen (F Welsey Schnieder and 10 writers, Wizards of the Coast, 224-page hardback). This was a purchase from the Mox Boarding House up in Bellevue. And it is interesting that, except for a small tempest (Tiamat=Takhisis*) I have heard absolutely nothing about it. Which is a little weird since the adventure ties itself to the "war" part of the War of the Lance, creating an adventure that runs concurrently with dragon armies marching through Ansalon. And it is tied into a wargaming boardgame (the component-heavy Dragonlance: Warriors of Krynn) so you can fight the battles as well. Plus has a lot of Dragonlance specific stuff (Kender, Gods, High Sorcery) for 5E. The book itself is WotC standard good in appearance, and for having a bunch of writers and editors on it, is coherent and cohesive, and tells an epic story without DL's well-known heroes. But since its release in December of last year, there has been mostly nothing in the 'net about it.

Necropolis (Mark Greenberg and Bill Webb, Necromancer Games, 240-page hardback). This is the first of the  NTRPG Three Castles Awards candidates. It is a further development of Necropolis, a Dangerous Journeys adventure by Gary Gygax (due credit to Gary inside, but nary a mention of GDW, the original publisher), which had a brief stop in 3rd Edition D&D over the years. As a refinement this top-notch, brought up to date for their Swords and Wizardry OSR Clone. It is an ultimate Ancient Egypt Adventure, and keeps the Gygaxian nature of brutal consequences for player actions (teleport into a room identical to the one you are in, but with all the doors missing). Updated and upgraded, it has improved art and excellent maps. Bonus - full-color poster map of the tomb. 

Dwarrowdeep (Greg Gillespie, 334-Page Hardback) NTRPG Three Castles Award Nominee. Greg Gillespie does Moria. Let me refine that further - Greg Gillespie, who does sprawling mega-dungeons like Barrowmaze and The Forbidden Caverns of Archaia (which my Monday night group is STILL moving through) and does so in a classic old-school D&D style, does a sprawling underground dwarven underground. Major sites are laid out, room-upon-room, Secondary locations can be built with tables and geomorphs. The cover shown here is for the "Special Edition Monochrome" which evokes the old, old style of the early D&D modules. Comes with a packet of maps for the main areas in the light-blue style of, you got it, early D&D Modules. Interior art includes pieces by legendary TSR artists. Very old-school.

Swords of Cthulhu (Joseph Block, BRW Games,128-page hardback). NTRPG Three Castles Award Nominee. This one made me smile. A lot of Old School D&D clones use the styles of early adventures, but this one comes very, very close to the original Unearthed Arcana I worked on all those years ago. So that made me smile. Added bonus - Cthulhu for D&D, Deep Ones as a PC race. Cultists and scholars as new classes. Spells that petition the Old Ones. Insanity rules, Mythos monsters and deities, and hints on running a Lovecraftian Game in 1e rules. Art varies from good to pick-up.

Corsairs of Cthulhu - Fighting Mythos in the Golden Age of Piracy (Ben Burns, New Comet Games, 300-page hardback) NTRPG Three Castles Awards Nominee. Wait a minute, didn't you ALREADY talk about this? Yep, got a copy way back here. So when this one arrived for judging, gave it to a colleague and re-read it. And pretty much my initial impression stands. The opening bits about adapting Call of Cthulhu for the golden age of piracy (1650-1730 AD) is pretty solid. The adventure is, well, all the map, and then off the map and onto other maps. We get a great setup for a Caribbean set of adventures, then head for the Pacific, the Dreamlands, and times and places beyond, with guest appearances by most of the mythos' heavy players. 

Endless Encounters - Dungeons (Bill Barsh, Pacesetter Games, 280-page hardback) NTRPG Three Castles Awards Nominee. It IS a big book of tables, but it is also a good springboard for dungeon-building, whether you need just something for the spur-of-the-moment or building a larger structure for later use. Embracing the old school nature of dungeon levels getting higher as you go down in levels, the tables allow you to figure out what is there on in a shorthand version. What is the purpose of the room? It's inhabitants? Its treasure. The examples provided (one per level) demonstrate how those results can be fleshed out to a more coherently thematic dungeon. 

Jungle Tomb of the Mummy Bride (Levi Combs and Jeff Scifert, Planet X Games,146-page hardback.) NTRPG Three Castles Awards Nominee. Like Necropolis, this is an expansion and refinement of previously published work, and while listed as compatible with a OSR game (Dungeon Crawl Classics) can be run under D&D rules of various stripes. Instead of ancient Egyptianish undead, we are talking about ancient Central Americanish undead, and can be fit into any hellish jungle settings in your campaign. Of all the nominees, this one has the most fun with its presentation, and keeps its tongue firmly in its cheek as it names encounters  Clean layout and artistic maps.

And the envelope please? The Three Castles Award for 2023 goes to:

Dwarrowdeep by Greg Gillespie. Congrats to the winner and see you folk next year.

More later,

*I have opinions on this contentious matter. Maybe someday I will even share them.

New Arrivals: Kickstarters and Conventions

It has been a few months, and more things have shown up on Grubb Street. Some of these are from Kickstarters, and a nice pile of them come from The recent Gary Con in Lake Geneva. 

Kickstarters continue to resolve, but the entire process has become less appealing over time. This is mainly because of shipping charges, which have increased on their end and as a result the buyer invests in the Kickstarter, then faces a increased cost for shipping, which can reach up to half the original price as a surcharge. One of the end results is that suddenly brick-and-mortars and conventions are more viable markets for small-market books. 

As always, these tend to be "first looks" as opposed to any in-depth response, and I will put the Gary Con swag at the end. 

Wingspan (Elizabeth Hargrave, Stonemaier Games, Boxed Board Game) Every year, I get a board game for the Lovely Bride, either for Christmas or her birthday. This one has been out for a few years, and has been recommended. It is a card-and-layout game where you put a variety of birds into different environments. European-style game, which means victory is by points and there are a number of ways to score. We've played it a couple times, and it is pretty smooth. Recommended. 

Pirate Borg (Luke Stratton, Limithron 166 page hardback) Kickstarter. Mork Borg (Dark Castle, which sounds more prosaic) was as heavy-doom-metal fantasy OSR release from a few years back, light on text, heavy on attitude. It won 8 Ennies, and has spawned a host of sub-lines for different genres. This one is about pirates. It follows a lot of Mork Borgian tropes - book-as-art-project, dramatic headings, lots of tables, but scrape a bit of that away and it doesn't fall TOO far from the D&D tree (classes, combat, dice, etc.) and looks pretty cool. It is art-school heavy, but there is a LOT here, particularly in ship descriptions, and the Kickstarter came with Dark Tides, a folio for hexcrawling (hexsailing) with your ship. Yeah, I want to try this one.

Flabbergasted: A Comedic Roleplaying Game ( Fluer and Chelsey Sciortino, Giga Mech Games/The Wanderer's Tome, 160 page hardcover) Kickstarter. Comedy is tough. OK, OK,  INTENTIONAL comedy is tough. RPGs are wide-open for Monty Python silliness. But to set out to make something funny, or even vaguely amusing - yeah, that's tough). Flabbergasted is set in a PG Wodehouse 1920s, where the stakes are low but important - social status and relationships. Set in the seaside town of Peccadillo, the art reflects a bright, breezy south-of-France sort of vibe. This looks like a book for actors (who really want to direct). Also one I would take out for a test drive.

Airship Campaigns ( Benny McLennan et al, Arcane Minis, 224 page hardcover). Kickstarter. This one is interesting in that it harks back to the very early days of the hobby, in which rule sets existed primarily to sell miniatures. In this case, the miniatures are flying ships from Arcane Minis. This is an expanded and printed version of something that showed up on pdf a couple years back. Nice production values, and they go with the idea of treating ships as large creatures, which was done for Ghosts of Saltmarsh and is cool. The Kickstarter version came with a map of part of the world and map tiles for a Rassen Assault Frigate.

Blackvale - A Fantasy Pittsburgh Campaign Setting for TTRPGs  (David Lasky30 page self-cover) Kickstarter, one of the ZineQuests from 2021. Fantasy but really post-apocalypse, this booklet would pair well with the 2nd Edition Gamma World, which used Pittsburgh as its setting. Definitely zine territory. A lot of local references - the good-aligned church is Saint Roger of the Neighborhood of Friendship. Some NSWF art connected with the Church of Ayn and the Self Made Man. Not too detailed, but a nice bit for the price (and shipping).

Wyst: Alastor 1716 (Jack Vance, Swordfish Islands edition, 282 page clothbound hardback) Purchased from publisher at Gary Con. I'm not a big fan of deluxe collector's editions, but the graphics and art is pretty cool, and  it has gold foil on the cover. And it's a Vance story I haven't read before. Goes onto the TBR (To Be Read) pile.

The Plaguewood Spider (Darryl T. Jones, Splattered Ink Games, 24-page self-bound) gifted from designer. We were talking about art in games with the reference to the Mork Borgs above, and this one is art-heavy, but has a more unified, professional and traditional fantasy feel. It is an introductory adventure for Seeds of Decay, a campaign setting that was launched on Kickstarter, and should be fulfilling soon. Looks good.

Fifth Edition Fantasy #4 War-lock (Michael Curtis, Goodman Games, 48 page saddle-stitched) This was in the goodie bag given to the guests-of-honor at Gary Con, along with a miniature, buttons, and some appreciated fresh fruit. A nice solid-looking 5E adventure involving the players trying to defeat an immortal warrior and his troops. Which sounds ... a lot like an adventure I've been running for 40 years at conventions. But hey, it's a trope.

Hamel's House of Oddities (Jon and Brynn Hage, Sleeping Giant Gaming, Folder with separate sheets) Gary Con promotional for an upcoming Kickstarter. Yep, this isn't even on the docket for Kickstarter, but I've  put myself onto the notifications list, and I never do that. And it is primarily the art that's attractive for that (and I realize that this particular write-up is talking a lot about that). What they have is an encounter that looks solid and and has visual backups. Yeah, this looks like it will be interesting.

Core  - A chronicle of M'Gistryn (Anastasia M. Trekles, Halsbren Publishing, 300 page trade paperback) Gary Con, purchased from author. The author came to my book-signing at Gary Con and told me that one of her inspirations to write was Azure Bonds. I stopped by her booth later and picked up the first volume of her series. Self-published, san serif typeface, better map than I've seen in NYPublished fantasy books (I'm not calling anyone out). Putting it on my TBR pile.

Ath Cliath a 10th Century Vikings/Celtic City Role-Playing Game Overview Book, (Ed Greenwood and Andrew Valkauskas, Pendelhaven Press, 362 page hardback) Purchase at Gary Con. Written for the Fate of the Norns Ragnarok RPG by Andrew Valkauskas, but really system-neutral, this is a block-by-block description of the Viking-era Dublin. Ed's voice comes through in all of this as he describes every building and most of the inhabitants. Excellent browsing book and a springboard for city-based adventures.

The Wrath of Brotherhood, Book One in the Brethren of the Spanish Main Series (Ozgur K. Sahin, self-published, 410 page hardback) Gary Con, purchased from author. Encountered the author at his booth - he had some of Wizkids' constructable pirate ships on his table. We talked about writers of the Age of Sail -  Forester, O'Brien, Kent, and other nautical authors, and I picked up the first book of his series. Pirate ship captain on a mission of vengeance. Sounds interesting. On to the TBR pile.

That's it for this lot - tune in in a couple months when another bunch piles up.

More later, 

Con Report - Gary Con XV

This one is a little overdue, but so be it. I want to cover it anyway.

I will fess up - I am not a big convention-goer. I make it to one, maybe two a year. Part of it is because of limited vacation time, and part of it is because I am homebody. Often when I go somewhere it is because I am sent as part of my job, or asked to attend as a guest.

But I have to say that Gary Con XV was an excellent convention, one of the best I've attended. 

Gary Con is in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, the birthplace of Roleplaying Games. It is named after Gary Gygax, co-creator of D&D. But if you're reading this, you already know that, right? In any event, Gary's son, Luke, put together this convention to celebrate Gary, his creations, and the entire industry he founded.

Gary Con XV was held at the Grand Geneva, just east of town. Back in the Elder Days it was the Playboy Resort, and while expanded and renovated, it has more than a touch of that 60's mystique (OK, one of the bar staff there was a former bunny, I found out). It is an extremely beautiful structure, and as a venue was perfect for the convention. The entire complex is done in Frank Lloyd Wright's "Prairie Style", which means low buildings that hug and complement the land. I like that, even through I had to deal with steps to get between buildings.

The Grand Geneva staff were amazing and efficient. I've been to a lot of conventions over the years where the staff tolerates the gamers, or at best treats them like visiting bathroom fixture salesmen. The staff here was engaged with the participants, warm, and friendly. Plus, they had daily maid service, something practically extinct in modern times. Bonus round? When the check-in lines got long, they offered champagne.

And there was a lot of food and drink. The three restaurants on-site were hotel-expensive but not horribly so. In addition, the Gary Con Staff arranged for feeding stations around the convention itself, selling hot food and cold drinks. Plus service carts that prowled the gaming spaces. And that first Wednesday night, when the registration lines were long they were selling beer from coolers in the hallways.

I packed myself with too much during the day, trying to keep the evenings free. I ran the Ravager Trilogy, which I realized was 40 (!) years old, namely when a fan I had sent a playtest copy to all those years ago brought it in for an autograph. It has been my "old reliable" that I use when I go to a new convention, and fits nicely into a 4-hour slot, but I might need to retire it. Maybe revise it to be a 5E version. Maybe.

I also ran "Under An Angry Star", which was an Al-Qadim/Spelljammer mashup that I wrote for the LUCCA convention in Italy. Going through it, I think it could stand an upgrade and revision, which may be a good excuse to expand it into a three-session set. Again, Maybe.

One of the highpoints of the weekend was running (briefly) in Jim Ward's might Gamma World campaign. James was eloquent and entertaining as always, leaning to random and relatively fatal encounters. I ended up getting shot by another player at the table, a mutant otter with a pulse rifle, but fun was had by all. For my pain, Jim presented me with a small autographed skull.

Some Swag

Also important for me was seeing folk I had not seen in literal decades. I worked in Lake Geneva for TSR, but had not been back for 20+ years. We held a TSR Alumni party on-site and it was a great opportunity to catch up with so many old friends. One of them, Kevin Melka, late of the RPGA, was passing out 3D-printed Cthulhus. He gave me a rainbow one.

And I was delighted to see Zeb Cook win a Lifetime Achievement award. I thought that was great. 

Oh, and we got to see the D&D Movie early at a local theater north of town. It was a fun movie, and I got a Dragon head dice container. 

Downsides? Very few. I suppose the fact we got about 6 inches of snow on Saturday. Fortunately it was a wet and heavy snow, and the temperature warmed later in the day, so I could push it off easily. But if you're going to rent a car in Wisconsin in March, make sure it has a snow brush.

And there was concrud fallout. Some friends had a nasty cold/flu afterwards. A lot of people tested positive for COVID. I escaped both, but have been a little brain-fuzzed for the past week. I don't know if should blame the gatherings or not. But I also left energized, and wanting to address some the half-dozen concepts I've been playing around with for a while

So, in summary - great convention, well-run, saw a lot of old friends. Kudos to Luke Gygax and an extremely talented team in putting it all together.

More later,