American Barbarica

Isle of the Unknown and new blog

2011-12-21T11:55:00.000-08:00

I'm thinking about shutting this blog down. I'm finally finished with school and I want to get back to talking about various OSR shenanigans, but I've let American Barbarica lie dormant for so long that it feels like I could benefit from a fresh start.

I've started a new blog called GIANT EVIL WIZARD. Come have a look. I've been studying Geoffrey Mckinney's Isle of the Unknown, and that will be my subject for several posts.

JOESKY WINS EDITION WAR

2011-02-24T18:49:00.000-08:00

Seriously, dude is killin' it right now.

For Valentine's Day I Got You The Black Sleep of Kali Ma

2011-02-14T11:14:00.000-08:00

and an Atomic Elbow:

EDIT: I am available to do shitty art for any OSR project involving Mola Ram or Professional Wrestlers With Heart Heads, preferably in the same illustration.

Fresh Ink

2011-02-05T00:06:00.000-08:00

Until now, my dude Joel and I have been tied at one D&D tattoo apiece. Then he shows up and drops this bomb on me, fresh from the shop:

Sweet Timothy Truman Warduke, dude. American Barbarica salutes you. It looks great next to your Fiend Folio Githyanki by Russ Nicholson:

You are kinda making me look like a coward though. I feel naked with just my Altar of Mammon by Dave Trampier:

It might be time to get that Erol Otus Shoggoth I've been threatening for like three years. Or maybe the Lich. Don't make me call dibs on Demogorgon, dude! Oh Shit!

SEE YA AT THE TATTOO SHOP!

Book Report: Realms of Crawling Chaos

2011-01-29T20:17:00.000-08:00

The Facts:

66 pages, six of which are consumed by the cover, a frontispiece, the OGL, an ad, and the back cover.
Written by Dan Proctor and Michael Curtis
Art by Sean Aaberg and Mark Allen (spoiler alert: the art is awesome)
The pdf cost me a very reasonable $4.95

The Conjecture:

The introductory chapter "Lovecraftian Dark Fantasy" is a well considered essay on the major (or at least most game-able) themes of HPL's mythos. It's hardly exhaustive, but Proctor clearly understands the material. Anyone seeking a deeper insight into the material should check out Hite's Tales out of Lovecraft, Houellebecq's Against the World, Against Life, and Joshi's HP Lovecraft: A Life. Proctor is clearly presenting the work as it relates to fantasy adventure games, and this is a good thing. (More on this at the end).

Next we get PC writeups for some monstrous races, including Innsmouth types, Subhumans, White Apes, and White Ape hybrids. None of these did much for me. I think the idea was to provide alternatives to the standard fantasy races (which are thematic kryptonite to mythos-inspired games). There's nothing wrong with any of these guys, I just didn't find them particularly inspiring. I'd probably play a Subhuman based on the name alone though. I am complete agreement with Blair that there really should've been a Ghoul race. Duh.

Next: New Magic, which provides ten new alchemical formulae (including things like the Drug of Zakarion, Satampra Zeiros's Powder of Ziephor, and Herbert West's secret formula). I dug every one of them. I also liked the majority of the fourteen new spells provided (Hideous Graft, Initiate Familiar, Mind Transference, and Walk Among Angles being especially gnarly).

The next twenty pages are monsters. All the usual suspects are here (though the lack of Gugs is nearly as unforgivable as the lack of Ghoul PCs). A number of these guys are less impossible to kill than I'd imagine.

Three pages of Eldritch Artifacts follow, none of which are surprising or mind-blowing.

The next three pages are devoted to Psionics. I was thoroughly underwhelmed by them, meaning that this chapter fits right in with every other bit of D&D Psionics I've ever read. Why no one (myself included) can write a creepy, flavorful set of rules that lets my PCs head explode Scanners style is beyond me. None of the material is usable by PCs, which is a bummer. On the other hand, Proctor admits that this stuff doesn't appear much in the source material, so my complaints in this regard might be misplaced.

Appendix 1 is the first of two contributions by Michael "Dungeon Alphabet" Curtis, and it's here that Realms of Crawling Chaos came alive for me. Reading Eldritch Tomes includes a really simple system for researching forbidden books, and does a good job of modeling the dangers inherent in such activities. Maybe you learn a new spell, maybe your bones turn into jelly. I loved this system.

Appendix 2: Random Artifacts (also by Curtis) alone is worth the five bucks I paid for this thing. 100 weird powers + 100 objects to house them + 100 strange properties associated with their use = Infinite Awesome. The first two artifacts I created were an extremely magnetic cube which allows a severed head to speak, and a candle which makes the bearer a friend to all cats, and which also happens to have a discernible heartbeat! (full write ups forthcoming).

Two more Appendices include a conversion chart for Mutant Future and the literary source that each monster, object, and spell are taken from.

In the end, this book is a fun, game-able take on take on HPL's mythos. While I fall into the camp that believes things like Great Old Ones probably shouldn't be represented with game stats, I also accept that any D&D game in which Cthulhu appears is probably going to end with someone trying to stab him in the face. If you're looking to play a deep game of cosmic nihilism and existential dread, D&D is not that game. That game is known as Call and/or Trail of Cthulhu, and it's also very good. If, on the other hand, what you really want out of a game is to slaughter Deep Ones with an Atlantean Sword, or try and mind-control your great, great grandson into letting you bang his girlfriend, this book is for you.

Overall, I give Realms of Crawling Chaos mostly high marks. The new magic and the two chapters by Curtis are what really make this book sing (or, if you prefer, whisper sibilantly). Nothing contained in this book is anything that an HPL diehard couldn't produce themselves, but the two HPL diehards who did produce it did a really good job. My overall hatred of Lulu will prevent my getting a print copy any time soon, but as a five dollar PDF it's a no brainer.

Still pissed off about the Ghouls & Gugs though.
DUDE: "Ghouls & Gugs: the Roleplaying Game". THAT WOULD BE FUCKING SICK!

Stoned Apes

2011-01-27T10:51:00.000-08:00

Old Teach is the common name given to an invasive species of cactaceae found on several planets in the Vodyanoi system. The plant is known to thrive in wildly varying environmental conditions, but Xynobis and the mineral core of Gung have the highest known concentrations. Xorn scientists on Gung have attempted to eradicate the plant with little success.

Xynobyssian ape sorcerers believe the plant to be a sentient, psionic hive intelligence that amplifies magical abilities when consumed. Individual cactus colonies are said to remain in contact regardless of the distance separating them.

Any character who consumes the plant must save vs. Poison. Failure induces fever, vomiting, and paralyzing stomach cramps for d6 hours. A non-psionic character who succeeds will experience hallucinations and an expanded sense of consciousness for d6 hours. However, any psionic character will have all psionic effects (duration, range, strength, etc) doubled for the next 2d6 hours. If a point system is used to track psionic effects, the number of points available is also doubled for the duration of the effect.

*Old Teach was a Lawful god in a 3.5 game I ran for a while. His priests carried his offspring in clay pots and cared for them obsessively. He was inspired by Terrence Mckenna's The Invisible Landscape. Gorgonmilk's recent entries brought him back to mind.

Alchemical Item: Dehydrated Henchman

2011-01-27T00:28:00.000-08:00

The Aether Barons of Hypnopolis, having grown weary of expenses incurred by employee death, tasked the Alchemancers Guild with finding a solution to their labor dilemma. The problem fell to Nong of Gung, an Alchemancer whose reputation has since been proven to be greatly exaggerated. Nong spent months in his laboratory, emerging only to refresh his supply of intoxicants, until finally declaring the matter solved.

Nong named his invention The Dehydrated Man. It was affordable, easy to transport, and required no food and very little water. The Dehydrated Man went into immediate production, the Alchemancers Guild became fabulously wealthy, and Aether production skyrocketed.

If only more testing had been done.

Dehydrated Henchmen

This item is worth 100gp. It usually takes the form of a quart-sized glass jar or canister filled with a blue-black salt. To activate it, one must empty the vessel onto the ground and add a small amount of purified water. After a brief alchemical reaction, the mixture will grow into a near-perfect clone of Nong of Gung.

Roll a d6:

1. The clone is alert, fully functional, and will perform any task asked of it.

2. The clone is frightened and confused for 1d4 rounds before eventually pulling it’s shit together.

3. The clone is obedient, but mouthy.

4. The clone is obedient but mentally deficient and only capable of very simple tasks.

5. The clone is obstinate and will only debate the ethics of slavery and the cruelty of it’s own existence.

6. The clone is insane. 50% suicidal, 50% murderous rampage.

A Dehydrated Henchmen lasts 1d6 hours, and at the end of which will become unstable and melt into a puddle of protoplasmic goo. Obviously, this is a single use item.

Edit: I apparently stole this idea from a thread I saw, bookmarked, and promptly forgot about. I knew I liked it too much to have actually been it's actual progenitor. Please accept my humble apology. I've never seen the new version of Gamma World, but I may need to change that soon. The marketing team at WotC is clearly more insidious than I suspected. DAMMIT!

Raygun Safety and You.

2011-01-25T09:59:00.000-08:00

"The galaxy is a dangerous place. Let’s keep it that way."

Alamo Industries is the leading outfitter for the Spaceman on a budget. And while you won’t find high end items like Vril-tech or Ultrawave devices in their catalog, they do carry a wide selection of fairly reliable rayguns at bargain prices. From discount Marconi Pistols to affordable Heisenberg Disintegrators, Alamo Industries has you covered.

Critical Fumble Table for Budget Energy Weapons (roll 2d6 and cross your fingers)

2. The antenna falls off and rolls 1d6 feet in a random direction. -2 to hit until repaired.

3. The Accumulator Array overheats. Weapon is jammed for 1d4 turns.

4. Shot fizzles: 1 charge is wasted.

5. Shot fizzle-dizzles: 1d6 charges wasted.

6. Weapon melts, causing 1d4 damage to the hand which held it.

7. Beam hits target (no damage) and is reflected back at shooter (full damage).

8. Battery goes critical, explodes 1 round later for damage equal to number of charges remaining.

9. Weapon dematerializes, permanently.

10. Localized Anomaly: Shooter is accidentally teleported 2d6 feet in a random direction. 1 in 6 chance of fatality.

11. Extremely Localized Anomaly: Weapon teleports 2d6 feet in a random direction, taking shooter’s arm with it. The wound is cauterized and no damage is incurred, but limb loss is permanent. However, Alamo Industries will probably offer a discount on a mechanical replacement (which likely has it’s own critical fumble table).

12. Complete Immolation: Save or be reduced to a pile of glowing ashes. The glowing ash pile provides dim illumination in a 10’ radius for 1d4 turns.

Be careful out there.

Realms of the Crawling Chaos coming sooner than expected

2011-01-21T12:55:00.000-08:00

According to Uhluht'c, we'll have the Lovecraftian supplement for Labyrinth Lord in the next week or so. I've seen the preview and it's looking as if the final product will be even more gibbous, rugose, and biliferous than expected. The art (by Sean Aaberg and Mark Allen) is particularly gnarly.

BE WARNED.

Mk III Nullifier Helmet

2011-01-20T19:16:00.000-08:00

arted by Boobery

Last night I dreamed about this helmet. I woke up realizing that this was what a typical vacuum suit might look in the Vodyanoi System. It's far more baroque than I'd originally anticipated, but who am I to question my subconscious?

The model illustrated here is part of a Mk III Nullifier Suit, used mainly by explorers out of Hypnopolis and Taringa Station. While not as effective as the sturdier Mk IV Holocaust variety used on deep salvage operations, or the Mk V Annihilation Panoply worn by Space Whalers of the Tunguska Diaspora, Nullifier suits are still prized for balancing protection with mobility, and are thus quite valuable.

Mk III suits have an AC of 2 and negate most environmental hazards, such as extreme temperatures or Somna Gas. They do not protect the wearer against Psionics.

Mystery in Space

2011-01-20T09:51:00.000-08:00

Xnoybis is the smallest planet of the Vodyanoi System. It has but a single civilized inhabitant, if such a word can describe the criminal sorcerer Feng Dü. His palace is an enormous, winding complex, where he is served by a legion of metal homunculoi. From there, he lords over a primitive race of subhuman ape-men who worship him as a god king, and who he seems to delight in torturing through endless biological experiments.

The numerous ruins on Xnoybis are believed to be pre-Herpetoid, but the inscrutable machinations of Feng Dü prevent anything but cursory scans.

If Erol Otus did pulp covers they might look like

2011-01-18T13:33:00.000-08:00

...this:

Speaking of Mystery in Space, anyone with the vaguest interest in bubble helmet scifi really needs to check out today's post on Monster Brains. Go now!

Stinkin' out loud

2011-01-18T11:56:00.000-08:00

After some free writing last night, I’ve begun to sift through the five settings mentioned in my last post. Here’s where I am with each:

1. American Barbarica 1950AD: Love it. Can’t get enough of it. Any alternate history in which Ronald Reagan stars in a film version of Conan of Cimmeria is a place I want to visit. On the other hand, working in this setting is ultimately playing in someone else’s sandbox.

Verdict: revisit this one if I ever end up finding players for it.

2. Prisoners of the Red Planet: Still intriguing, though the idea is still very abstract in my head. The thought about a weird western set on Mars seems to be the part I’m most drawn to.

Verdict: keep exploring

3. Evil Creature Double Feature: The gimmick in this one might be enough to run with, but I don’t know how far it can run in the absence of actual play. It does remind me how much I love CoC though.

Verdict: file under “Cold Case”, revisit if opportunity to run CoC presents itself. Add CoC content to the blog.

4. Mystery in Space: Still into it.

Verdict: move forward

5. Brain Invaders: Can’t stop thinking about this one, although the idea is still very abstract and anything I did with it would probably look very different than I currently envision. I already know that Brain Invaders is the wrong name for it, and that I’m looking at something much closer to HPL’s Dreamlands. Which excites me. I also see it being able to absorb some of the themes of the other stuff on this list.

Weirdly, Blair’s post on burnout reminded me of the campaign I ran when 4e came out. It was set in Lemuria, and took a lot of inspiration from (among other things) Clark Ashton Smith’s The Maze of Maal Dweb and the Dreamlands sourcebook for CoC. I went through the campaign notes last night and realized there’s a lot of stuff I like in there. The only reason I abandoned it was that we realized that 4e was the wrong rule set (both for the setting and for our group).

Verdict: Keep chipping away at it until I at least figure what it looks like and out how to describe it.

Next post will have content, I promise.

Five games

2011-01-16T19:54:00.000-08:00

Here are five campaigns I’d love to run if I had limitless free time and a crew of fearless players:

1. ~~American Barbarica: 1950 AD~~~~. I've been wanting to do an OD&D hack for Kenneth Hite’s supremely excellent~~ ~~The Day After Ragnarok~~ since the day I read it. I'd set it in the ruins of Appalachia and fill it with teenage cavemen, Mothmen, reptilian shapeshifters, and Hyperborian Death Machines. I'm thinking a ratio that's 70% R.E. Howard and 30% ~~Fallout~~ sounds right. Stats for Silver John are a given. The main antagonist would be the snake worshiping Grand Army of the New Konfederacy as led by the Exalted Cyclops of West Virginia - none other than future West Virginia Senator Robert Byrd!

2. Prisoners of the Red Planet: An alternate 19th century in which the victorians decide to do their tomb robbing on Mars rather than in Egypt. A lucrative trade in Martian mummies follows, complete with unwrapping parties. Of course, it’s only a matter of time before intellects vast and cool and unsympathetic draw their plans against us. While you can’t do Mars without acknowledging Burroughs, I’d shy away from straight Barsoom pastiche. In fact, a frontier town on Mars strikes me as a pretty neat place to set a weird western.

3. ~~Evil Creature Double Feature~~. A small town setting for Call of Cthulhu, based on Bronze Age horror comics. Think ‘Suburban Gothic’. Despite my abiding love for D&D, CoC is probably my favorite game. It was the first game I ever actually ran, rather than just played. Most folks primarily associate the OSR with D&D, but Chaosium’s flagship game has barely changed over the course of it’s six editions. That’s pretty fucking old school. It’s a game that doesn’t get enough attention in the blog scene and I think it deserves more. And I think the bronze age thing would be a lot of fun to work on, and very different from the mythos standard. I’ve been meaning to plow through my ~~Tomb of Dracula~~ ~~omnibuses anyway.~~

4. Mystery in Space: a horror-themed pulp 50’s space opera set in 'The Vodyanoi System'. Also inspired by comics, but here we’re talking EC classics like Weird Science, Weird Fantasy, and the imaginatively-named combo title, Weird Science-Fantasy. More alien ruins, bug-eyed monsters, space zombies, and beautiful-but-deadly alien princesses than you can shake a raygun at (note: rayguns are largely ineffective against bug-eyed monsters). My aim here would be to juxtapose Gee-Whiz retro-futurism with the stark alien horror of a haunted star system. Expect plenty of splattered brains on the bubble helmets.

Speaking of brain matter,

5. The Brain Invaders. Okay. This is one of the weirder game concepts I’ve had. I thought is one up during an extended surgical recovery, which may be why I thought mashing up psychic espionage and dungeoncrawling was a good idea. The setting is an ancient, unnamed city, equal parts Interzone and Fantasy Island. No one remembers exactly how they got there, but Malevolent Forces (supernatural or otherwise) prevent them from leaving. Everyone in the city has a secret, and one of those secrets is The Escape Plan. To find it, PCs use a process (magical, psychic, superscientific, or hand-wavy) to delve into the subconscious minds of the Island’s inhabitants.

Which is where then dungeon aspect comes in. Journeying through someone’s mind is -at least in game terms- indistinguishable from dungeoncrawling. There are traps and locked doors and weird puzzles and very strange monsters, and the idea of a magic sword is literally the same as a magic sword. I think HPL’s dream cycle is probably the biggest influence here, so hopefully Realms of Crawling Chaos will include stats for Gugs.

So, there you go. These are the idle thoughts of a gamer in exile. I’m going to do a little one page writeup of each of these to see if any have legs as a world building exercise. If so, the winner(s) will go forward as my 2011 setting project. If any of these strikes you as something you might like to read about, do speak up.

Gamma River

2011-01-08T22:17:00.002-08:00

Cryptic Alliance: The Sidekick Society

2010-12-29T23:20:00.000-08:00

NAME: The Sidekick Society (AKA Fanmen) TECH: III

TYPES: Pure Strain Humans (20%) Humanoids (65%)

Mutant Animals (10%) Androids (05%)

NUMBER ENCOUNTERED: 1d6

BASE: varies, but always referred to as a “Secret Lair”

SECRET SIGN: Head upturned, chin thrust forward as if in contemplation of a Better Tomorrow. Fanman bases are marked by a seal which reads “Approved by the Comics Code Authority”.

DESCRIPTION: The Fanmen are a Cryptic Alliance dedicated to bringing truth and justice to the wasteland. They hold to a moral doctrine derived from religious pamphlets discovered in a bunker of the Ancients, housed in a cache which included small plastic idols and colorful costumes. The pamphlets themselves were encased in radiation-resistant mylar sleeves, and are rumored to describe the mythical exploits of mutant “Superheroes” who protected Earth Alpha from crime and alien invasion. Fanmen point to these myths as proof that Mutantkind existed on Earth Alpha, and that Genetic Purists are full of Brutor shit.

Most folks think they've been in the wastes too long, but Fanmen dedicate their lives to defending those who cannot defend themselves, and to exacting ironic and frequently brutal justice/revenge upon those who would victimize the innocent. This puts them at odds with the vast majority of other Cryptic Alliances, whom the Fanmen refer to as “Supervillains”.

Fanmen can be recruited (if they believe the cause to be just). They can never be hired, and they never check morale.

Gammazons

2010-12-28T15:03:00.000-08:00

image by Halro, used without permission but I bought Superjail on DVD so whatever.

NAME: Gammazons

NUMBER: 1d8

MORALE: 1d4+8

HIT DICE: 3d8

ARMOR: 4

LAND SPEED: 12/900/18

MS: 1d10+11 IN: 1d10+11

DX: 1d10+11 CH: 1d10+12

CN: 1d10+11 PS: 1d10+11

ATTACKS: by weapon

MUTATIONS: *see description

DESCRIPTION: Sages generally agree that Gammazons are descended from a race of Ancients known a “Strippaz”, though there is some speculation that they could, in fact be androids. Gammazons resemble Pure Strain Human females, though their uniformly beautiful appearance has led some to suspect a stable genetic mutation.

Though beautiful, they are capable of astonishing violence, and regularly lead raids on Pure Strain settlements. Healthy adult males are enslaved, never to be seen again.

Gammazons possess a specialized version of the Devolution mutation (GW 2e pg. 10, also called “Ancestor Form” on pg. 28 of Mutant Future).

NAME: Zone of Lechery

RANGE: 15m Radius TYPE: C M

DURATION: Special USAGE: 1d4 times per day

NUMBER: 1d4 males DAMAGE: none

EFFECT: Gammazons emanate an aura that strips powers an mutations from the victim, who regresses along ancestral lines. The victim’s most powerful mutation is lost when the power is used successfully. The GM choses which power is lost, but only those mutations gained in the last five hundred years are affected. Pure Strain Humans lose 1 from their highest mental Attribute Score instead. Anyone effected by this power will not be capable of physical violence against the Gammazon for the duration of the effect, and will instead be overcome by the basest form of lust.

The aura tends to only effect males, and any mutations or abilities lost as a result of exposure to the aura return 1d4 minutes after the victim moves out of range. Any victim who survives contact with Gammazons is 75% likely to be merely embarrassed by their own lusty behavior, while 25% fall hopelessly in love.

1 out of 24 Gammazons will be a Gammazon Queen, which is like a regular Gammazon but hotter, better equipped, and more dangerous.

illustration by Vo Minh Mcburney

Back From the Grave/ Christmas Field Report

2010-12-26T12:18:00.000-08:00

American Barbarica is back in business after too long an absence. In the unlikely event that anyone is curious, a brief recap of the past three months:

1. I got accepted. Holy crap.

2. This lead to a complete restructuring of my life. I still have a full time job, and 100+ hour work weeks leave little time for the kind of nerdy endeavors to which this site is nominally dedicated. Fortunately, most of those hours are spent in creative work, so I have decided to keep living for now.

3. The Moldvay thing is in semi-permanent retirement. Bumout. Last I heard, Our Heroes were stuck in the middle of a Godforsaken Wilderness, and were hanging out with a bunch of Werehorses. Will they ever make it to Agartha and discover the Hollow Earth? Who fucking cares, those two sentences are awesome together.

Anyway, at some point I took the blog offline and then kinda forgot to reopen it. I didn’t mean for it to go this long. Time flies, much like the TARDIS.

*END RECAP*

*BEGIN CHRISTMAS FIELD REPORT*

Having some days off was weird. On Thursday I theater-hopped a triple feature and managed to catch Tron Legacy, Black Swan, and True Grit for the price of a single ticket. Eat it, Regal Cinemas. I found myself completely enjoying the three films, but ultimately decided that the combination of all three constitutes a film much greater than the sum of it’s parts. All my mind remembers is a six hour epic about a one-eyed law enforcement program riding the trail in a digital outland in order to bring an evil electronic bird woman and her gang of outlaw lightbikers to justice. Woo child!

Christmas Eve was pretty much ten hours of Fallout: New Vegas, followed by dinner with friends. I am ashamed to admit how uptight I got while watching my friends’ three year old son Oliver play rough with an ALF doll. Someone had told him about ALF’s appetite for felines, and Oliver -a noted cat fancier- decided harsh retribution was in order. Repeated body slams followed, along with anguished internal cries of “NO DUDE! BE GENTLE! HE’S VINTAGE!”.

Nerd alert, dudes. Caring about the wellbeing of a 25 year old stuffed animal that doesn’t belong to you is abnormal psychological behavior.

Christmas Day was more Fallout followed by more dinners, followed by another dinner, quickly followed by Sailor Jerry’s Rum, and a few rounds of Apples to Apples. The Doctor Who Christmas Carol closed out the evening and reminded me of the True Meaning of Christmas: Outer Space, Frozen Girlfriends, and Romantic Carriage Rides Pulled By Flying Sharks.

God bless us, every one.

Tumblr

2010-09-23T21:38:00.000-07:00

I've been messing around with tumblr a bit.

I like it.

Barbarica At Large.

2010-09-15T17:12:00.000-07:00

Nick at Carto Cartography has put together a pretty neato pile of ideas for applying a science fantasy idea I once had to other genres, and I think he's done a crackling job of it. Turns out, you can get a lot of milage out of a random thought.

Check it out.

A Private Cosmos

2010-09-14T12:02:00.000-07:00

During my daily perusal of i09, I saw a reference to Philip Jose Farmer's World of Tiers series. Further lazy research leads me to believe that it's about a series of tiny universes created and maintained by godlike overlords who determine everything from the physical laws to the physical layouts of these universes. If this sounds familiar to you, perhaps it reminds you (as it does me) of the general subject of this blog.

I've never read these books, but I have read enough of Farmer's work to know that my enjoyment of it is something of a crapshoot. I'm a huge fan of the Wold Newton Universe, but Riverworld can basically suck it. In general I try to avoid series scifi these days, though my recent re-reading of Vance's The Demon Princes may have swayed me back to the literary habits of my savage youth.

Aparently, some french people even licensed the setting for an RPG.

So, if you've read these books, can you recommend them? Can I just drop in and out and still have it be worth my increasingly-limited free time? Or should I just go with my gut and swipe the general idea for a meta-setting in which mad, capricious "Dungeon Masters" sit behind impenetrable dimensional Screens and use polyhedral AIs to invent bizarre milieus with which to torture a doomed race of "Player Characters"?

I'm mostly kidding, I probably wouldn't go totally meta like that. I've been kicking around an idea in which a group of powerful sorcerers on a "typical" fantasy world are all astronauts and the only people aware of the fact that said fantasy world is actually a lost planet in an otherwise "typical" sci fi universe. I feel like I could set up shop somewhere in the middle ground between these two concepts.

Holy Mountain

2010-09-11T20:09:00.000-07:00

So, American Barbarica is going to see a 2/3rds reunited Sleep play Holy Mountain tonight. I wonder if it will hold up after 15 years and a general cessation of bong hits? I'm actually kinda hoping they just scrap Holy Mountain and play Jerusalem in it's entirety.

How to start a Weird Science Fantasy game.

2010-08-31T17:21:00.000-07:00

(Who doesn't love Pete Mullen?)

Here's a quick idea for some Olde School Weirdness in the EC Comics tradition.

Step 1. Don't tell your players anything about the game they're about to take part in.

Step 2. Get the pre-game blather, gossip, inebriates, etc, out of the way.

Step 3. Pass out blank character sheets. Tell your players not to roll any dice, or do anything character related just yet. Move on to step 4 before anyone gets weird about it.

Step 4. Each PC awakes in a metal sarcophagus. The lids are opened and a dim glow emanates from above. Each character is naked, unequipped, and covered in a thin layer of amniotic slime. They have no memory whatsoever of anything prior to their waking up two minutes ago.

As they explore their surroundings, the PCs find themselves in a dome shaped room. A large area of the dome is torn, blasted, or bitten open, revealing a night sky full of alien constellations. The hole in the dome appears to be the room's only exit.

Instrument panels with no discernible functions line the walls. Red lights blink for unknown reasons. There is also one extra (empty) sarcophagus in the room. Depending on your plans, this could have been vacated anywhere from an hour to a decade ago.

Step 5. Escaping from the dome begins a series of Attribute Checks by which the PCs actually learn their attribute scores. Basically, no player knows what his Strength or whatever is until he needs to do something Strength- or Whatever-related. Probably best to set a low-ish target for most of these checks, as their only real purpose is to determine attributes.

Some (brief) ideas:

Climbing out of the dome: Strength
Determining the purpose of anything in the room: Intelligence
Deciding how long the Other Sarcophagus has been empty: Wisdom
Breathing a lungful of alien atmosphere, or ingestion something found in the dome: Constitution
Picking a lock on an equipment locker to scavenge what few supplies remain: Dexterity
Look cool naked while covered in a thin layer of amniotic slime: Charisma

Step 6. Just outside the dome, the PCs find the half-eaten corpses of a party of adventurers (one for each PC). The corpses are dressed in tattered spacesuits which still function as light armor, but do little else. Eerily, each of the corpses looks exactly like a decomposed version of one of the PCs. The name tags on the spacesuits are all visible, and the players are free to determine what those names are, since the characters they're playing are clones of these unlucky bastards.

Step 7. As soon as the PCs have scavenged some of the gear, Devil Dinosaur and Moonboy attack! NOTE: My vision is Kirby specific, but you could just as easily drop a Gorn, a Shoggoth, a Wampa, or a Beholder, etc up in this bitch. Don't roll for Hit Points until someone gets hit.

Step 8. If the PCs defeat the monster, they notice a trail of bootprints (tread identical to their own) leading off into that desert, mountain range, alien wilderness, or Black Ziggurat on the horizon. If the PCs are captured, they are taken as slaves to wherever you want those footprints to lead.

Anyone who dies in the encounter wakes up 2D10 hours later in a metal sarcophagus inside a dome shaped room…

Here's the fun part: The Other Survivor can be anyone you want them to be, from Mcguffin to Big Villain. The PCs could follow his trail from place to place, always one step behind, hoping that he might know something when/if they finally catch up to him. Or maybe she hatched a while ago and has set herself up as god-queen of an alien cargo cult. Or maybe it's Doctor Smith and he just screws with the PCs because he's like that. Or maybe it's a heroically bare chested American astronaut who's fallen into the clutches of some damn dirty apes, and you can have his + 3 blaster (but only if you pry it from his cold, dead hands).

Anyway. That's how I'd do it.

(...or Virgil Finlay?)

The Hall of Honored Dead

2010-08-22T10:05:00.000-07:00

I've been playing D&D with Vo Minh Mcburney for five-ish years now, meaning I've seen a lot of his ridiculous characters die in a lot of ridiculous ways. He's also a pretty ripping draftsman, which the above video hints at but fails to capture in full glory. The characters seen here are (in order of appearance):

Minhyun: This dude is technically a Warforged Wizard from the 4e game we did, but his origin story rules. He started life as a homunculus created by the evil wizard M'gurk. M'gurk was a transmuter with brain parasites (technically his brain was evolving into another life form trapped in M'gurk's skull -imagine Krang from TMNT. The party eventually battled the Brain Monster that erupted from M'gurk's cranium, which used stats for a Hydra). Minhyun was one of a long line of minions tasked with caring for M'gurk's gross menagerie of monstrosities. Minhyun took pity on a failed experiment named Pest (a constantly mutating pug/ alligator/ dragonfly thing who was supposed to be euthanized), and he raised the creature in secret while he went around absorbing esoteric lore from M'gurk library of magical librams, folios, and grimoires.

Minhyun modified his chest cavity into a kind of pet carrier, and Pest hangs out there when he's scared or tired. When the party met Minhyun and Pest no one was quite sure which one was the wizard and which was the familiar. That is awesome.

Beef Mangoo: A Name Level Fighter from a Mentzer campaign run by my friend Ned. Beef Mangoo's father lost him to an Owlbear in a poker game. Beef was raised by the Owlbear's family, Goldilocks style. Beef helped defeat the Shadow Lord and the Master of the Desert Nomads, he journeyed to one of Mystara's Moons on a sailboat, he has travelled through time, and he helped rescue Uther of Blackmoor from the Comeback Inn. Beef is retired and now runs a nature preserve for Owlbears.

Mandy Mangoo: Beef's fraternal twin sister, the Necromancer Mandy Mangoo had proficiency with the whip and a fondness for Edvard's Black Tentacles. She was from a 3.5 game. She travelled the Outer Planes with the Planar Trade Consortium and laid waste to Castle Ravenloft. I can't remember how she died, sadly. Maybe she's still out there somewhere.

Samuel: Formerly enslaved to the next character down this list, Samuel the Halfling was well practiced in the arts of Starting Shit at Random for No Good Reason and Screwing Up the Big Plan. I loved this l'il guy, who trod the jeweled thrones of Turnip Valley beneath his hairy feet. He met his death via a particularly gnarly roll on a homemade Potion Miscibility Table, taking out several other PCs, some dwarves, a Yeti, and a large chunk of Mt. Gammafrost in the resulting mushroom cloud.

Maglor: All I really remember of Maglor was that he was the Elf who owned Samuel. I believe he died in the Caverns of Quasartron (i.e. Quasqueton).

Steve: 3.5 Lizardman from Paizo's Age of Worms AP. Steve wielded a Spiked Chain, the idea of which is Totally Metal, but the rules for which are just a pain in the ass. Steve ran away from his tribe because of an arraigned marriage. He was duty-bound to marry the Lizard Princess, but his heart belonged to a Bullywug Princess named Gurple. Don't remember exactly how he died, but given the adventure path it was probably Kyuss Worm-based.

Serpent Ghandi: (Mentzer/Encounter Critical mashup) This alien from the Phasic Swamps of Stygia Prime has been covered elsewhere. He's still on tour, his Damnation Van's fuel tank of Wizard Blood is still on "E" and, yes, he's still pregnant with Bee Girl Larvae.

Dirka Dirka Dirka: (Castles & Crusades/3.5) DDD was a Half Orc Ranger with an owl sidekick named Owlberto. Dirka Dirka Dirka is still alive and is the Sheriff of Stillwater, and is proud to report that no woman has been impregnated by any sort of frog creature since he took office.

Anyway, I think this list and the video above give a pretty good justification for why we play this ridiculous game. Note that there are several other players in my games whose PC roster is equally nuts.

The character sheet art was shown last night at Artichoke, which is a monthly DIY gallery/art party run by some friends here in Rip City. I overhead a few people remembering their childhood experience with D&D, which was cool. There was a lot of really great stuff on display, but I got too drunk to capture it as anything but a blur. My inability to show you Team Neeson's future classics "Birth of the Kool Aid Man" and "Nude Celebs: Mayor McCheese & She Hulk" ranks among my life's great failures.

Cosmic Horror is, Like, Totally Harsh.

2010-08-15T11:03:00.000-07:00

Art Hammer

2010-07-29T13:00:00.000-07:00

"Fuck You I'm Keeping It" by Booberry

5x7 carved linoleum, red paint, sharpie, varnish.

On display at Artichoke Gallery for, like, several hours this saturday. Officially the most normal looking art I've ever made.

Don't worry L'il Buddy. I will eventually get back to posting nerd rants.

Oh yeah, I got accepted to WK12.7. Holy Cats!

If you start seeing beholders and magic missiles in sneaker commercials in a few years, suspect the hand of Booberry.

And Another Thing

2010-07-19T17:16:00.000-07:00

Today marks the end of a 35 year streak.

I had it coming.

The Architect of Ruins

2010-07-19T15:44:00.000-07:00

I spent the entirety of last weekend interviewing for a slot in this year’s WK12 program. 12 can be difficult to articulate to people who don’t already know about it, but I’ll give you my understanding of it.

Wieden + Kennedy is the world’s largest independent ad agency. If you’re reading this, that means you have internet access. It follows that you live in a place where you’ve seen some of their work. W+K is a global office, but is headquartered in Portland Oregon, where I live. For the past six years, W+K has been running the 12 program, variously called a school, an internship, a micro-agency, and a social experiment. The idea, or at least my understanding of the idea, is that they take a group of 12 creative people with no practical knowledge of advertising, and put them through an extremely intense year of internship, because by doing so they will find things that could not have been found any other way. It’s a crucible approach to education. Failure, or at least the kind of balls-out risk taking that could result in great failure, is openly encouraged.

Which is why I applied (the image at the top was my application, and yes, it's that way on purpose).

This is a relatively recent interest of mine. Prior to this, my experience with advertising was limited to the creation of punk flyers. I’ve never really thought of it as a career option. In fact, I find the concept of viral desire to be one of the more abhorrent afflictions modern man has unleashed upon itself. When I describe the program to my friends, the reaction I get is usually something along the lines of “Congratulations man! But why the fuck would you want to work in advertising?”.

I’ve come up with a pair of canned responses for these occasions, one of which very likely shovels dirt onto the graves of social acceptance and peer respect. The first, mostly innocuous idea I try to get across is what I call The Creative Argument, wherein I explain that being forced to find creative solutions to constantly changing problems you may not always care about, and to have to try and find ways to get others excited about shit that they might not care about, is a challenging and therefore worthwhile creative exercise.

The second and slightly more upsetting argument is the one I refer to as The Propaganda Argument, and I understand that it sounds vaguely sociopathic. It goes kinda like: “If you can convince someone to buy shoes they can’t afford, or a soda that tastes like shit, you can make them do anything”.

Calm down, that statement doesn’t have to be as sinister as it sounds. Propaganda, historically, is seen as a form of media manipulation ranging from carefully controlled views of reality presented through the willful omission of certain truths (Fox News), to mind control based on outright lies (Nazi Germany). But imagine the kinds of awesome social destruction one could wreak with a truth-based media weapon.

I’m not talking about putting up billboards that say “Fast food makes you fat when you eat too much of it” or “Soda pop is nutritionally worthless and causes diabetes”, or even “Your government is full of shit” (although I believe all those things to be true). I’m talking about genuine, utopian, hippy-values kinda shit. I’m talking actively empowering people to believe in themselves. To understand that being unhappy is a choice, not an assignment. To understand that we may all be stuck here together, and that we probably oughtta treat each other a little more civilly because it’s fucking sophisticated to do so, and that modern life is full of distractions and intimacy is becoming harder to achieve, even though it’s one of the only things in life that has any real value.

You don’t need a team of dream specialists led by Leonardo Dicaprio to plant these ideas in people’s heads, because we already know these things to be true. All we need is a way to remind people that they are important, to wipe away the sleep of apathy and remind ourselves that life does not have to be this way. The Future isn’t just a concept. It’s an ideal, a goal worth pursuing.

That’s all a long way from selling sneakers and energy drinks though. Maybe I’m just hoping to justify the fact that I’m trying to do something with my life that I still have some ethical reservations about. But I truly believe an idea worth having is worth clinging to, and that an idea worth clinging to is also worth sharing.

Two years ago I was dying of cancer. Now I am alive and the cancer is dead. To survive, I had to become an idea, one that was greater than disease and fear.

Anyone can do this if they have support. Everyone deserves that support.

Swamp Yeti

2010-06-13T20:09:00.000-07:00

Illustration by Booberry

Slobberwocky

2010-06-08T11:24:00.001-07:00

Illustration by Mike Neeson

Frequency: Rare

Number Appearing: d4

Armor Class: 3
Movement: 90/30 in water, 15/5 on land (Slobberwockys are very clumsy on land)

Hit Dice: 6
% in Lair: 30%

Treasure Type: nil

Attacks: Claw (d6)/Claw (d6)/Bite (d8)
Alignment: Chaotic

The Slobberwocky (sometimes called a Gnar Gnar Beast) is a bipedal ichthyoid, native to Stygia Prime but also found throughout the water bearing planets of the Vodyanoi system. They are ferocious, opportunistic carnivores, but have a particular fondness for marsh pheasant.

Female Slobberwockys exude an ichor-like saliva prized by Necromancers and Witch Doctors for it's regenerative effects, and living specimens fetch top dollar in the market stalls of Oozopolis. Their spawning pools contain rich concentrations of this chemical, which is useful in the creation of juju zombis and Grundymen.

The infamous Slime Pirate LePois lost an arm to a particularly large Slobberwocky named Old Satan. Fortunately, LePois' wrist chronometer had been malfunctioning at the time, for an erratic ticking sound is now said to accompany the beast wherever it goes. This faint but unmistakable warning has saved the lives of countless Bog Folk. LePois had the lost limb replaced with a steam harpoon, and is rumored to have developed a crippling fear of clocks.

Slobberwockys, like nearly everything else, are the natural enemy of the Swamp Yeti.

*I'm trying to get these entries up earlier, but Mrs. Barbarica has papers due this week.

The Phasic Swamps of Stygia Prime

2010-06-07T15:15:00.000-07:00

Lot # 614, consisting of a Coca-Cola bottle stuffed with a single piece of paper, was bought at auction from the estate of Dr. Vivian Sangfroid. The note is in Ms. Sangfroid's own hand, though the script becomes increasingly strange and childlike as it goes on. One side of the page is a strange drawing in ink, the other side contains a cryptic message. The note is dated to 1900, but the paper, ink, and bottle all date to the mid 1970's, making this one of the earliest items in the auction catalog.

Illustration by Dave Neeson

"As I sit here on the floor of this strange cabin, waiting for the Malacas to consume my intellect, I cannot help but replay the events that led us on this most disastrous of missions.

We came to the Phasic Swamps of Stygia Prime, the last known whereabouts of Dracula's Star Coffin, in the summer of 1900 AD. The pollen-rich atmosphere played hell with our instruments, crashing our balloon and killing most of our pack apes. We managed to save a few supplies before the craft sank into the bog, but most of our food and weapons were lost. My compass must have been damaged in the crash, for one direction had somehow crept across the face to replace all the others, leaving only the letter S at the end of each point. Soon, the true horror began.

Professor Xynobis, having broken his leg in the crash, fell behind and was consumed by a Gnar Gnar Beast. Even now I can hear his twin personalities crying out for assistance.

El Tigre De Muerte was unmasked while wrestling the fabled Swamp Yeti, and was forced to commit ritual suicide. Have you ever seen a man snap his own neck? It would break your heart to see a luchadore's tears.

My beloved Octavian, raving and insane, set off on the trail of a Wolf O' The Wisp and has not been seen since.

And Vulnavia, poor, sweet Vulnavia, has not been the same since falling into that pit of Regeneration Slime. Each night she hears Voodoo drums, and twice we have been attacked by juju zombies who whispered her name from the Mangrove trees.

We are doomed. Do you hear that? The Malacas is coming! Soon it shall consume my intellect, and I shall be no wiser than a Pfung Berry. I curse the very day I left the orphanage! I curse the day MY NAME IS VIVIAN AND I WANT A PONY.

KITTY, HAMMER, RAINBOW, PURPLE, JELLY, STARDUST, PRINCESS."

Thanks for nothing, Uncle Ben

2010-06-02T14:34:00.000-07:00

With great power comes great responsibility, but my responsibilities didn't come with any abilities.

(Swamp Monster Week starts June 7th)

Lizard Folk

2010-05-26T06:24:00.000-07:00

My previous post actually generated a couple of emails, something of a rarity here. Oddly, both emails were concerned about the lyrical content of the song Bad Math. I feel it should be fairly obvious that those lyrics are satire, but it is entirely possible that life in 21st century America has left me with an overdeveloped sense of satire. Thus, clarification:

I am fascinated by conspiracy theories, both for the theories themselves and for the multi-level fantasy world they represent. I'm not sure I actually buy into most of them, but I like reading about them. One of my favorites is the Reptilian Shapeshifters Control Everything theory put forth by David Icke, a former BBC sportscaster who believes that humanity is the product of a breeding program initiated by aliens from the Draco system, and that most of the world's political leaders are also aliens. Skrulls even. Furthermore, Icke has a mullet in every photo I've seen of him, which should be a pretty strong indicator that he's not completely sane.

Remarkably, Icke has tons of followers. Thousands of people in dozens of countries believe (or claim to believe) in the Reptoid Hypothesis, and that films and TV shows such as V, They Live and The Matrix are an attempt to warn us. Icke's fans are divided pretty evenly between UFO abductees, ironic hipsters, and aryan supremacists who believe that the Lizards in Icke's theories are actually secret code for Jews. Like, for real.

That's where this whole thing gets really interesting to me. The fact that an idea as far out as Serpent People can be linked to something as eff'd up and dangerous as racism seems like fiction, and yet this is an actual, Real World belief held by a number of people, many of whom own guns. Icke maintains that when he says "Lizards" he means "Lizards", but you can't put the Genie back in the bottle once it starts waving a swastika. Once again, Nazis ruin it for everyone.

I think conspiracies have a lot in common with mythology. Both are examples of scared humans trying to make sense of a world that is fundamentally creepy. It's easy for me to see why people might want to believe that someone like Dick Cheney is an alien. It might somehow be *slightly* less frightening to tell yourself that something as awful as China's recent wave of child stabbings are the result of MK ULTRA-style mind control, rather than something people came up with on their own. Existential Dread is far too horrible for some folks, so they try to convince themselves that there is some evil entity pulling the strings. I can understand that desire.

But the fact is that there might not actually be any strings, or even a puppeteer.

Maybe Number Six was really Number One, and the village was just his mind.

Pay no attention to the Man Behind The Curtain, because he might not exist, and then Oz meant nothing, and we really are stuck in Kansas.

Anyway, that's what the song is about. Maybe.

Relax, this is probably my last non-gaming post for a while. They don't seem to go over all that well. I'd argue that this whole deal is fodder for a pretty killer horror game though.

Maybe somebody's already running it for me.

Wrestlevania Not In Stores!

2010-05-21T06:08:00.000-07:00

Not a lot of game related updates here of late, mostly because I've been busy with other stuff.

A recent example of said "stuff": my side of the insert for my band's CASSETTE TAPE:

Image by Booberry (work in progress)

Not D&D related per se, but definitely monster related. If you like shitty punk music about werewolves and ghosts and amateur wrestlers and reptilian shapeshifter conspiracies and vehicular manslaughter, Crypt of the Grave might be relevant to those interests.

EDIT: Upon re-reading the lyrics I realize I may have constructed the perfect Encounter Critical campaign.

The Grim Reaper Declares War on my Adolescence.

2010-05-16T15:40:00.000-07:00

Ronnie James Dio died today.

If you grew up in the 80's and were also the kind of kid who dug dragons and wizards, chances are pretty good that you were also a Dio fan. This news, coming only a week after the death of Frank Frazetta, is devastating.

Stargazer (from Rainbow's 1976 album Rising) is playing as I type this, as it often is when we play D&D. His influence was enormous, his energy as a performer unmatched, and he never once strayed from his vision. The staff at American Barbarica raises the horns in salute to one of the greatest vocalists in the history of rock and roll.

Thanks Dio. Legions of Heshers stand ready to storm the gates of Heaven at your command.

Hello Valhalla.

2010-05-10T13:55:00.000-07:00

Frank Frazetta 1928-2010

R.I.P.

Pimp Lich

2010-05-06T03:16:00.000-07:00

Flyer by Booberry

(Famous Monsters of Filmland magazine + Mexican Pulp cover + Bela Lugosi still vs. Photoshop) I may reuse this as the "About the Author" photo when I publish my best selling autobiography "An Addiction to Terror: The American Barbarica Story".

Also, there was no way I was gonna make it out of the comic shop today without picking up these l'il buddies:

Book Reports to follow...

A Dumping Ground for Corpses and Information

2010-04-27T14:51:00.000-07:00

I've been criminally negligent in my session reports for the Monday night Moldvay game. Though we only run for three hours per session, a hell of a lot has happened in the 27 hours in which this campaign has been played. Here are the bullet points:

Session 4 (03.22.2010) "Being for the Benefit of Mr. Ape"

-The Lucky Brigand meets his end at the tip of a Goblin Arrow. The PCs discover an enchanted Orangutan with his arm stuck in a hole. Smallie Biggs and Gary Gobblecox help free the ape. Ivorique notices that the Orangutan's hand bears an injury matching the one Gary dealt to the Giant Monster Arm in Session 3. A trio of medieval executioners bursts into the room. Ivorique and Elroy the Bugler Boy are killed in the ensuing battle.

Campaign Body Count: 2

Session 5 (03.29.2010) "Conversations With Dead People/ The Witch's Trial"

-Two new PCs show up: a cleric named Panini Penguini ("Like Chef Boyardi crossed with Mario") and Figerfel Mufflestauffer, hapless halfling with a heart of gold.

-The PCs meet Hopkins, the ghostly librarian of Hell's Convent. Conversation with Hopkins reveals that:

-Gabriel Tycho (Son of Moonville's mayor, first mentioned by the Lucky Brigand in Session 3) has been wandering the halls and conversing with the spirits of Hell's Convent since he was a boy. He is also the creator of the murals painted throughout the Convent, which illustrate stories told to him by the ghost of Anton Phantom.

-Anton Phantom is in control of Gabriel and had him kidnap Illyria Moonrider, believing her to be the reincarnation of Persephone (High Priestess of the Sybelline Sisterhood and the woman who cursed Anton Phantom and his men to undeath).

-Gabriel is found. A trial is convened, The Abominable Anton Phantom presiding. The PCs give violent testimony, and Gabriel is killed. Gould O'fall is possessed by the Phantom as it leaves Gabriel's body. Gary kills Gould in self-defense. Illyria is rescued. The bones of Anton Phantom and his men are discovered and burned. The Phantom is defeated. Or is he?

Campaign Body Count: 3

Session 6 (04.05.2010) "The Job"

The next two sessions are taken from "Old Feodol's Basement" in Dungeon Crawl Classics #29.

-Smallie Biggs and Gary Gobblecox are hired by Denell Barthada to locate his father's will before his evil sister Larissa can get her hands on it. Meanwhile, in another tavern, Figerfel Mufflestauffer and Panini Penguini are hired by Larissa Barthada to locate her father's will before her evil brother Dennel can get his hands on it. Ha!

-The two groups bump into each other as they attempt to break into Old Man Barthada's place. They decide to secure the will for themselves in order to see what the hell is going on.

-A secret room is discovered, along with evidence that Old Man Barthada was a master thief in life. A magic candle is found. Connections to The House of Tasteful Gentlemen and Moonville's teenage brigand problem are inferred. Mysteries deepen. Baboons are battled. Moonville's Monkey Menace is starting to look serious.

Session 7 (04.12.2010) "Eat Me, Drink Me, Riddle Me, Mutilate Me"

-Potions of Diminution are drunk and common mice are battled. A riddle is solved and a death trap avoided. Smallie discusses matters of import with a snake. The Will is discovered, as is a double cross. Dennel Barthada attacks, and is killed. Larissa is captured alive, and is relieved of her trappings (a Potion of Gaseous Form and a magical dagger of Agarthan design). In the light of the magic candle, Old Man Barthada's will is revealed to be a treasure map.

Session 8 (04.19.2010) "Little People of the Monolith"

From DCC 51.5 "The Sinister Secret of Whiterock"

-Larissa is turned over to Moonville's new sheriff, Garlan Grellhelm (Illyria's stepfather). A bounty is paid and a journey is undertaken. The treasure map leads to a monolith in the hills above Moonville, and a secret door is located therein. The PCs descend into the depths of the earth. Figerfel falls down a well. A rescue effort is mounted. An important lesson about how much rope one should take on a dungeoneering expedition is learned, and Smallie Biggs dangles at the end of it. Figerfel decides he prefers Gaseous Form to drowning, and a potion is quaffed. Giant Rats attack.

Session 9 (04.26.2010) "The Missing Mountain"

-Smallie Biggs battles rats while Figerfel Fartcloud explores his subterranean surroundings. Gary comes to Smallie's aid by jumping into the well without a light source or any sense of the well's depth! ADVENTURE! Hilarity ensues and somehow they both manage to survive. The party is now split three ways. Panini Penguini is killed by Little People. The party is now split two ways. Figerfel finds a door that giggles. Bioluminescent Fungi are discovered, along with eight crystal columns which contain pictograms depicting the seven mountains of the Moonstone Mountain range. However, an eighth mountain is also depicted, one which corresponds to no known landmark. The floor descends. An Elf named Vittorio introduces himself. Figerfel returns to solid form, lacking clothing or gear, and licks a shroom, resulting in a glowing, naked halfling which provides dim illumination in a 15' radius. Little People appear. The party is surrounded!

Campaign Body Count: 4

The Stars My Decimation

2010-04-22T21:10:00.000-07:00

So, I was rearranging some of the crap currently littering the hallowed halls of American Barbarica HQ last night when I realized that my copy of Traveller was sitting right beside the Spelljammer box set, both of which were mere feet from X1: The Isle of Dread.

My sunday game could use a shot in the arm.

Do I dare?

Does Anybody Here Speak Neutral?

2010-04-14T14:52:00.000-07:00

On starting my Moldvay campaign, one of my main goals was to use the rules exactly as written. This is, I think, an interesting exercise and can lead to a lot of fun for anyone willing to accept game rules as the literal physical laws of the game's milieu*. So far I've stuck to my guns. However, four sessions ago (which is, coincidentally, the number of session reports I'm behind on), I made a mistake which has ultimately led to what I think is an enjoyable quirk of the Monday night campaign.

In the Moldvay basic booklet, the second sentence of page 13 says "All characters and monsters capable of speech speak the language of their alignment (Lawful, Neutral, or Chaotic)". Somehow (probably owing to the quantity of wine I had drunk), I managed to forget the three bold words in the previous sentence. In my defense, they are not bolded in the actual book, possibly because Tom Moldvay didn't suspect anyone would be dumb enough to screw this up, but then again, Tom Moldvay never had me as a player.

Because I forgot these three words, I allowed Smallie Biggs (the dwarf in our campaign) to use alignment language to speak with an orangutan. I guess the idea of a drunken dwarf trying to use some bizarre combination of gesticulation and cant to avoid combat with an ape entertained me enough to let it fly. I figure no harm was done, and it's a funny moment in the ongoing story of the campaign.

However, Smallie has since used alignment language to speak to a cobra and a pair of baboons (there's a bit of a Johnny Quest theme to my home-brew encounter tables). I considered disallowing this, but only briefly, because that original encounter with the orangutan had become a memorable part of the established canon.

Sometimes mistakes lead to good things. In this case, a mistake led to a game world in which all animals can talk and be understood- as long as you share the same cosmic world view, i.e. alignment. Some may see this as a bad, silly, or outright stupid thing, but I'm happy it happened. It opens the setting to ideas I might never have other wise considered, and perhaps more importantly, it provides more opportunities for role playing. I think negotiating with a Grizzly Bear could make for a more entertaining game situation than simply drawing swords and fighting one. And anyway, if the PCs fuck up the negotiation they'll still get a chance to be mutilated, so it's a win/win.

The concept of talking animals has been around for about as long as humans have been telling stories. If it's good enough for Bullfinch, it's good enough for me.

*another word I only know because of Gygax.

World's Best Dungeon Master

2010-04-10T00:40:00.000-07:00

I Smell a Mystery!

2010-04-08T22:37:00.000-07:00

The staff at American Barbarica has spent the last several days trying to discern the identity of Oberon Sexton, AKA the Gravedigger, AKA a mysterious but central character in Grant Morrison's excellent run on Batman & Robin. We would like to make our conclusions a matter of public record.

I don't know if predictions count as spoilers, but be warned that this post may or may not include the solution to the Greatest Funnybook Mystery of Our Time. I will endeavor to keep specifics to a minimum, but if you haven't read up to issue #11, you might wanna come back during Swamp Monster Week.

Okay. Here goes.

American Barbarica's official prediction for the conclusion of the Domino Killer/Mexican Train storyline goes like this:

In issue #12, Damian (controlled by Deathstroke) will end up killing Dick Grayson. Wracked by guilt at having killed a "good man" and leaving Gotham without a protector, Damian makes the decision to sell his soul to Dr. Hurt/Thomas Wayne/THE DEVIL, and thus becomes the Batman of the future we saw/will see in Batman issue #666.

However, the Omega Effect which eventually returns Bruce Wayne will also affect Damian, causing him to come unstuck in time just like dear old dad. Damian of the future will take up the disguise of Oberon Sexton in order to prevent the 10 year old Damian of the past from making the infernal bargain.

Thus, Oberon Sexton is Damian Wayne.

We could be wrong, of course. But American Barbarica stands by this post.

Note: anyone looking for a much deeper, thought provoking review of Batman & Robin should avail themselves of Rikdad's blog.

-this message has been brought to you by Booberry and Grizzlebane, amateur dicks.

God Bless The 10th Doctor...

2010-04-02T14:03:00.001-07:00

I spent this afternoon catching up on Doctor Who, and was rewarded with a 200' tall steam-driven Cyberman circa 1851 from "The Next Doctor". This episode gets bonus XP for including a carbine rifle that shoots a cathode death ray!

(Yes, that is a human pilot inside the robot's mouth).

For a while now, I've suspected that David Tenant's run as the 10th Doctor might eventually unseat Tom Baker's 4th Doctor as a personal fave. Any remaining doubt was blasted away the moment I saw the Cyber King striding across Dickensian London, like an IG-88 action figure stuck inside one of my mom's snow globes.

Lycanthropic Skeletroid.

2010-03-30T15:27:00.001-07:00

Illustration by Booberry

Anytime a Skeleton is bitten by a Werewolf, it has a 60% chance of contracting Lycanthropy. Additionally, any child produced by the union of a Skeleton and a Werewolf will always be a Lycanthropic Skeletroid. These occurences are fortunately quite rare, except in lands where both creatures are common. Wrestlevania, in particular, has a huge Lycanthropic Skeletroid problem. They appear as mundane Skeleton Persons until you piss one of them off, which makes them get all werewolf-y.

1 in 6 Skeletons will always be a Lycanthropic Skeletroid, except in places like Wrestlevania where it's more like 4 out of every 6. Anyone bitten by a Lycanthropic Skeletroid will suffer a far greater curse, becoming a dreaded Skeletropic Lycanthroid in 2d6 days.

In game terms, Lycanthropic Skeletroids are normal Skeletons with AC 5 and 4 Hit Dice until taking damage, at which point the stats for normal Werewolves are used.

Drink Their Tears

2010-03-30T02:08:00.000-07:00

Here is wisdom.

1d30 Shocking Conclusions to Frog Week

2010-03-29T14:19:00.000-07:00

Due to the aforementioned technical difficulties, the epic conclusion of Frog Week was delayed. Apologies to sirs Siam and Bond, who provided the art for this entry.

Illustration by Jose Siam

We now return you to the epic finale, already in progress:

...and anyway she was already dead and I had grabbed the wrong briefcase by mistake, which is how I ended up with a copy of The Plane Below: Secrets of the Elemental Chaos for D&D4e. I know, I know. Things happen when you drink Wild Turkey. Anyway, it's got a random chart on pg. 26 called "Reasoning With A Slaad". It only has six entries, which sucks, but entry number five is "The Slaad's head explodes, attacking in a [some 4e jargon]; 2d4+5 damage. The characters do not gain XP for "killing" the Slaad. It re-forms it's head after a short time".

That's pretty awesome, but we can leverage the power of the D30 for a better chart. Ergo, I give you the following:

Talking To A Slaad

Roll thy d30 and despair:

1. Dirty Joke: Slaad makes an off-color remark. Saves vs. Paralysis or be overcome by nervous laughter for 1d8 rounds.

2. "Say, Where Did You Get Those Shoes?": Slaad takes a shine to a randomly determined character's gear. Turn it over (all of it) or duel to the death!

3. "Stop Me If You've Heard This One": Slaad offers a week of mindless servitude to anyone who solves the Riddle of the Gelatinous Tesseract.

4. Deus Ex Medusa Machina: The Slaad shares an important secret about the campaign, then turns to stone.

5. Cutting Out The Middle Man: The Slaad opens it's mouth and motions the adventure to climb inside.

6. Mating Ritual: Slaad attacks until opponent is wounded. On a subsequent successful attack, an unfertilized Slaadpole egg is inserted into the wound. Nothing short of a Remove Curse cast by a 10th level Cleric can remove the egg. 1 week later, 1d6 Slaads begin following the victim, hoping to fertilize the egg.

7. Toadliquor: Slaad invites adventure to collect 1d3 drops of Slaad-sweat. If consumed, the sweat induces Tasha's Hideous Laughter with a 10% chance of permanence.

8. "It All Makes Sense Now": The Slaad decides that the Modrons have been right all along, begs forgiveness.

9. Frog the Bounty Hunter: Slaad pulls out a Wanted Poster depicting itself holding a Wanted Poster depicting itself holding a Wanted Poster... offering 5,000 gp to anyone who can turn the Slaad over to itself, dead or alive.

10. "The Game Of Life": The PCs offer a convincing argument. The Slaad agrees to grow up, act right, settle down, and start a family.

11. "Sim Sim Sala Bim": Slaad agrees to grant a Wish to each PC who willingly accepts Slaadpole insemination. (Note-Slaads have no ability to grant Wishes).

12. Business Proposal: Slaad claims to have "insider information" that Roddy Vile is going down in the 5th round, but lacks funds to bankroll the action.

13. An Invitation To Tea: Rare and expensive teas are served. Unfortunately, they keep coming and the Slaad commands that you drink each one. 1d3 damage per round. Break out the Drowning rules after the 4th round.

14. X-treme Scavanger Hunt: Slaad unveils the location of 3 fabulous magical treasures then threatens to kill the adventurers unless they find and sell each item within 72 hours.

15. Conspiracy Theory: Slaad admits that all politicians are really shapeshifting reptilian aliens and gives the PCs a powerful artifact to see them with. The artifact, called the Hoffman Lens, looks like a pair of dark earthling sunglasses circa 1988. They function as a Gem of Trues Seeing, but only work on shapeshifting reptilian aliens.

16. "Shall We Play A Game?" Slaad invites PCs to enjoy it's favorite hobby, a game with strange dice whose arcane, minutiae-obsessed rules are bewildering and exceedingly difficult to master. Save vs. Death Ray or become hopelessly bored. Anyone who becomes bored raises the ire of the Slaad, who steps out from behind a paper screen and attacks, then retreats behind screen. Note- Slaad is AC-2 and has complete cover while behind the screen.

17. "Can I Have Your Autograph?": The Slaad is the PCs biggest fan and offers to help in anyway it can, but is too star-struck to be anything more than an annoyance.

18. "Like, OMG So Sad!": The Slaad has lost it's pet, one of those little yippy dogs that starlets carry around in Louis Vuitton purses. The Slaad offers to be the PC's BFF if they help find the lost dog (who has tired of the Slaad's attention and would prefer not to be found).

19. "Dude... This Shit Will Blow Your Mind". Slaad shares it's recipe for an intense psychoactive powder. Anyone imbibing this drug has nightmarish hallucinations, but Magic Users double the number of spells available for the next 2d6 hours. The powder is highly addictive and requires rare ingredients.

20."Yarn": Slaad is knitting a turtleneck sweater out of humanoid intestines. The Slaad only needs a few more feet of intestines to complete this project, and demands a volunteer. If no one steps forward, roll for Initiative...

21. Your Lucky Day: Slaad is depressed over the tedious meaningfulness of life, and is too despondent to fight today.

22. Crisis on Infinite Middle Earths: The Slaad puts forth the theory that the infinite number of universes comprising the Multiverse was recently reduced to a mere 52 universes due to editorial fiat. The concept is complex and difficult to comprehend and each PC must tell the origin story of a DC superhero to avoid lethal brain melt. 25 XP bonus for characters other than Batman and Superman.

23. "Wait, What Were We Talking About?": Roll 1d4. Every [resulting number of rounds] the Slaad completely forgets what happened on the previous round.

24. "See You In Hell, Mister Darwin": The Slaad is convinced that the PCs are planar biologists in search of it's Slaadstone. It attacks without mercy and fights to the death.

25. "Are you sure that's what he said?": The Slaad forces the party, under pain of death, to help him decipher the lyrics of Samudio Sham's smash hit "Woolybullywug".

26. Pon Farr Madness: The Slaad uses an oddly shaped halberd to beat the PCs into unconsciousness (1d12 +6 damage, subdual damage only). PCs awake 2d6 hours later in the Slaad's tacky boudoir, amid silken sheets, lava lamps, and leopard print wallpaper. The Slaad serves Mimosas (brunch only) and Bloody Marys. The Slaad smokes silk cut cigarettes and has mysteriously grown a pencil mustache over night.

27. The Frogemoth Whisperer: The Slaad teaches a random PC a surefire way to befriend Frogemoths.

28. "Search Your Feelings, etc.": The Slaad delivers a pitch perfect rendition of Vader's "I am your father" speech from Empire Strikes Back to a randomly determined PC, then attempts to bite off the PC's hand. Surviving characters are plagued by nightmares of that awful Dagobah cave sequence (you know the one) for 1d4 weeks.

29. Double Jeopardy: Roll Twice. Both events play out during alternating turns.

30. Veteran of the Edition Wars: Roll 1d6 and consult page 26 of the 4e manual "The Plane Below: Secrets of the Elemental Chaos". Cross fingers for the exploding head result.

Illustration by J. Maddison Bond

We are not controlling transmission

2010-03-29T04:37:00.000-07:00

American Barbarica is experiencing technical difficulties. Frogs have taken over the control room, resulting in bogus blogging business. Our sorcerer-scientists are on the case. We will return to normal programming momentarily.

Illustration courtesy of the January 1952 issue of Popular Mechanics

Frog Week: Further Frogging

2010-03-25T19:41:00.000-07:00

Blair at Planet Algol has given us multi-edition D&D stats for Glenn Danzig, effectively winning the Internet.

Frog Week: Choking Croaker

2010-03-25T12:26:00.000-07:00

Illustrated at Actual Size by Dave Neeson

Frequency: All Too Common, Sadly

Number Appearing: 3-30

Armor Class: 8 Movement: 30', Fly 180'

Hit Dice: 1+1 % in Lair: 50%

Treasure Type: nil

Special Attacks/Damage: Choke The Shit Out Of You (1d4)
Alignment: Neutral

Bane to all who would venture beneath the earth's surface, Choking Croakers are both dangerous and ubiquitous. The species is said to have been originally bred in the transmutation vats of the wizard M'gurk*, and was intended as a cheap and efficient way to kill Gnomes, Hobbits, and children.

Choking Croakers would merely be an annoyance were it not for their noose-like tongues, which they employ indiscriminately and to great effect. Though they are relatively easy to dispatch, they attack as creatures with 3 hit dice rather than 1+1. The initial attack does no damage, but will Choke The Shit Out of You for 1d4 damage on the following round and each round thereafter. The choking will continue until either the Croaker or it's victim is dead. Up to four Croakers can attack the same victim simultaneously.

The Department of Gnomeland Security has issued a Kill on Sight order against these creatures, whom it calls "Nature's L'il Executioners".

*M'gurk will be covered in detail during Evil Wizard Week

Frog Week: Sir Roderick Vile

2010-03-23T22:04:00.001-07:00

Illustration by Mike Neeson

Rowdy Roddy Vile has developed a fearsome reputation in the Danger Pits, and boasts a winning streak longer than the entire career of many lesser gladiators. His eminence as a Fighting Man is matched only by his prowess as a lover, and the slave girls at the Pleasure Palaces of Ploog are said to have lost countless hours to his insatiability. He is a dedicated philanthropist and has also dabbled in politics.

He first gained notoriety for his flashy, over-the-top fighting style, but it was his match against the Gnargathian Chimera which made him a superstar. Fans note this match as the first appearance of The Amphibulator, Vile's signature finishing move. The Amphibulator is a difficult maneuver, combining technicality with utter brutality, and is the chief source of spinal injuries among amateur battle enthusiasts.

Though his star seems continually on the rise, the Murder Girdle continues to elude him. Vile hopes to change this, and his upcoming battle with archnemesis and current Girdle-holder Lord Bartholomew Bloodfart is expected to be a defining event in the careers of both combatants.

It is said that no gladiator lives forever. But when the lights have dimmed and the blood has dried, Sir Roderick Vile will live on in our hearts. The batrachian who became a champion, the toad with a heart of gold.

Frog Week: Woolybullywug

2010-03-23T07:22:00.001-07:00

Illustration by Booberry

Frequency: Rare

Number Appearing: 1d6

Armor Class: 4 Movement: 30' (10'), Fly 60' (20')

Hit Dice: 3 % in Lair: 30%

Treasure Type: nil

Attacks/Damage: Grab (no damage, but see description) Bite (1d6) plus poison
Special: Anyone bitten by a Woolybullywug must save vs. Poison or become a Were-Woolybullywug

Alignment: Chaotic Evil

Woolybullywugs are a peculiar strain of lycanthropic Bullywug. They range from 5.5 to 7 feet in height, and will attack anything smaller than themselves. They can fly, albeit clumsily, and their preferred hunting technique involves swooping down, wrapping their legs around their prey, and then dropping the victims from a great height.

In order to grab an opponent, the Woolybullywug makes an attack roll. This attack does no immediate damage. If successful, the victim is grabbed and must make a save vs. Paralysis (Failure indicates that the victim's arms are pinned helplessly at their sides, success means that the victim's arms are free and he may still attack the Woolybullywug). The Woolybullywug will try to fly away with a grabbed opponent on it's next turn, dropping them once it reaches a height of roughly 100'. Any prey larger than a Halfling will cause the Woolybullywug to fly at half speed.

Anyone contracting Were-Woolybullywugism can only be cured by a Remove Curse spell.

Woolybullywugs are carnivorous but do enjoy over-ripe fruit, which gets them drunk.They rarely surprise opponents due to their infamously annoying, repetitive croaking. Their language appears to be a garbled and unintelligible form of Common, and the bard Samudio Sham is said to have based his only hit song on this sound.

(sorry)

Frog Week: Baba Gaga

2010-03-22T13:12:00.000-07:00

Illustration by Vo

Frequency: Unique

Number Appearing: 1 (1)

Armor Class: 3 (Baba Gaga), 4 (GlurgaMor'Pp)
Movement: 30' (10')

Hit Dice: 5 (Baba Gaga), 8 (GlurgaMor'Pp)
% in Lair: 90%

Treasure Type: H

Attacks/Damage: Spells (Baba Gaga), Claw (1d6)/ Claw (1d6)/ Tongue (same as a Giant Frog)
Special: GlurgaMor'Pp will swallow an opponent on a natural attack roll of 19-20 (see Giant Frog)

Alignment: Chaotic Evil

Baba Gaga is a venerated Bullywug Shaman who dwells in Boogy Bog. Her mount, GlurgaMor'Pp, is also her house, and is rumored to be her eldest son. He is also the likely father of Baba Gaga's other two children, Gurple and Gargle*, both of whom gave up swamp life in favor of high adventure.

Baba Gaga hates all non-amphibians but seems to reserve a special contempt for Bog Folk**. This enmity is mutual, and the Bullywug/Bog Folk blood feud rages on. She is also rumored to be responsible for the Stilwater Massacre and the unfortunate events at the Blue Oaks plantation (the blackened flagstones of which are the only testament to the women who died there). Ohnius Holbrook of Habberdasher Downs has offered a small fortune to the man who slays her, but the bounty remains unclaimed.

Baba Gaga brews powerful narcotic potions from plant alkaloids, having received the recipe during psychic communion with the Slaad Lords. Most of her tribe are hopelessly addicted to these potions. She plays the Mouth Harp and is fond of fine cigars. She casts spells as a Druid of 5th Level, and can speak the language of moths. When the moon is full, she can summon 1d6 Woolybullywugs*** to aid her.

*Gurple and Gargle have both been PCs in games I've run. Gurple is still stranded on the Isle of Dread, and Gargle has fallen under the malevolent influence of the Mustacchio Demoniac.

**The plant-based hillbillies known as Bog Folk will be covered during Swamp Monster Week.

***See tomorrow's entry

Today's article was illustrated by the amazingly talented Vo Mcburney. Vo plays in both my campaigns and can draw the crap out of anything. He takes commissions. Contact him directly: vominh2000 AT hotmail DOT com

Non-Controversy.

2010-03-21T19:12:00.000-07:00

I am actually bummed that this is what passes for controversy in D&D. What happened to the good old days when playing D&D meant you worshipped the Devil?

Some of the people I ride the bus with are probably more dangerous than the folks in that video.

Next up: Frog Week!

Save vs. Product Identity

2010-03-20T14:18:00.000-07:00

WARNING: UNFOCUSED RANT CONTENT

James over at Grognardia can sometimes get a bit academic for my tastes, but I am in complete agreement with this post. I have no desire whatsoever to see this stuff turned into a unified movement. I don't even really like the term OSR, because it implies an ideology greater and more cohesive than simply "make shit up and have fun playing a game with your friends", which is the only principle that actually matters here.

Don't mistake me. If you are doing good work relevant to open-ended, open-source gaming, and if you want to bring more attention to that work and maybe even publish it, then I want to see you succeed. Nothing would make me happier than to walk into a toy store and see Swords & Wizardry or Labyrinth Lord (for example) on the shelves instead of fifty kinds of collectible card games. But I do not want to see "Olde Schoole: the game" on those shelves. There is no Unified Field Theory of the imagination.

Having a handful of like-minded creators pool their ingenuity, their creativity, and their more corporeal resources to pursue a common goal is generally a good thing. But the commonality of that goal, the singularity of vision, is often the making or breaking point. And it is important to understand Group A's vision might be drastically different than Group X's. If Group X wants a Thief class, and Group A doesn't, what happens when Group A wins the gaming wars?

DIY games are Punk As Fuck. They're a way to have fun with your friends while giving the finger to the privatization of Fun. But even Punk has marketability and that's why you can now buy tight pants and spiked leather and green hair dye at the mall. Gygax had a problem with the fact that kids in California played D&D differently than kids in Wisconsin, and thus "solved the problem" by writing AD&D to get us all on the same page. I have a deep affection for AD&D, but the OSR does not need it's own AD&D telling us how to play.

Right now we have a vibrant, creative community exchanging ideas about games, and that is a truly wonderful thing. If what we already have could be improved by a more focused effort, then that effort would be eminently worthwhile. But will it be improved? The Black Ziggurat is awesome because it exists everywhere. Blair was the conduit through which the Ziggurat willed itself to live (and make no mistake- live it does), and now it haunts us all. If there were only one Black Ziggurat, it would just be another dungeon and space would be a poorer place.

Maybe I'm spoiled because I live in a place where so many people are interested in the old stuff. I run two games per week and I literally have turn people away because I have more interested players than I can handle. And if I quit my job and got divorced and ran D&D every single night, I would still not be able to play through half of the awesome stuff that the OSR has produced in the last two years.

I don't really care if this thing gets any bigger. It's never going to be the 80's again, and OD&D (or whatever) is never going to unseat whatever edition is the most current. And I think some of us may be confusing whatever impact the OSR has on the industry with the impact that nostalgia in general has on the industry. WotC isn't putting out a Red Box to sell to old schoolers, they're putting out a Red Box because a lot of the people who work there grew up playing the same game we did. It's still 4e in a retro box and it's only in a retro box because it looks cool.

I've gotten a lot wordier and rant-ier than I set out to. It should be fairly obvious that I don't have a point (pointmaking being a direct violation of Standard Operating Procedure here at American Barbarica). I do not mean to disparage anyone's efforts to bring more attention to their work, so long as their work is of good quality and done with purity of intention. But I'm gonna lose track of things if they get any more advanced than "make shit up and have fun playing games with your friends".

A Plague of Frogs

2010-03-17T22:54:00.000-07:00

In one of the first 3.5 sessions I ever ran, the PCs uncovered an evil plot involving a secret Bullywug breeding program in an Innsmouth-esque town. All the town's women had been carried off by Humanoids from the Deep, and the adventure concluded with a set-piece battle in a birthing pool filled with unfortunate and enormously pregnant women. Every few rounds, one of the insane, screaming women would split open and release a torrent of tadpoles onto the battlefield, resulting in Difficult Terrain and a lot of uneaten snacks on the game table.

Why am I like this?

I steal a lot of my ideas from comics. A particular favorite is B.P.R.D. and it's ongoing tale of mankind's War on Frogs. If you're not reading it, imagine a reborn Hyperborean sorcerer attempting to prevent/create humanity's undoing at the hands of titanic cthuloid entities that vomit-birth wave after endless wave of acid breathing frog persons, and you will only scratch the surface of the genius of creators Mignola, Arcudi, and Davis.

The work itself attracts me for numerous reasons, most of which boil down to the fact that the authors seem to have the same reading list as me and have distilled that mixture of Weird Tales authors, Jack Kirby comics, and Saturday night monster movies down into an alchemical ichor-liquor that melts faces and glows in the dark.

Plus, like me, they see the intrinsic horror of The Frog.

Frogs have given me the willies since childhood. I have only held one once, when I was four years old. It peed in my hand, and then I squished it. I have never forgotten the series of sensations that accompanied this act of murder. Fascination with it's tiny legs and soft skin, not at all slimy, as I had imagined. Then fear, nay, absolute terror as I realized it was peeing on me, followed by a revulsive contraction of my fist, the crunch of breaking bones (toothpicks were sturdier), and finally the overwhelming horror and shame at what I had done. I cried and ran to my mother, who forgave me even though I had stolen something that could never be regained, and we buried the tiny little frog under the Dogwood tree in our front yard.

That was thirty years ago, but it was an important (if ugly) occurrence in my development as a human. It is likely also the genesis of my fascination/repulsion with the frog. Which brings me, at greater length than I had intended, to the point of this post:

What is it with frogs in D&D? There's a hell of a lot of frog monsters in this game. Off the top of my head I can think of Giant Frogs, Bullywugs, Gripplis, a dozen colors of Slaad, Tsathoggua, and the recently reinvigorated big daddy of them all, the Frogemoth (Blair is right about a lot of things, you know). Sure, there's like forty kinds of goblinoid, but everybody knows that's just because they call any humanoid monster that isn't frog-based a goblinoid. Is it all Clark Ashton Smith's fault, or was Arneson's Temple of the Frog just that influential? Or does the answer lie deeper? The bible seems divided on it's stance on frogs:

Exodus 8:6-7 "And Aaron stretched out his hand over the waters of Egypt; and the frogs came up, and covered the land of Egypt. And the magicians did so with their enchantments, and brought up frogs upon the land of Egypt."

Revelation 16:13 "And I saw three unclean spirits like frogs come out of the mouth of the dragon, and out of the mouth of the beast, and out of the mouth of the false prophet."

In Exodus, the frog is one of many divine plagues that help the Israelites secure their freedom from Pharaoh, and thus could be seen as a breaker of bonds. But in the Revelation it is clearly demonic in origin. In Egyptian mythology, the frog is associated with Heket, the midwife-goddess, who the Greeks most likely appropriated into Hecate, goddess of witches, the night, necromancy, and all things awesome. In the Rig Veda, the universe is carried on the back of a giant frog. The frog is a classic witches' familiar. Ahriman of Zoroastrianism is associated with the frog. Ch'an Chu, the three legged toad of Chinese mythology, knew the secret of eternal life. In Paradise Lost, Satan takes on the form of a frog and whispers to Eve as she sleeps in Eden. Mr. Toad was a complete asshole behind the wheel. They turn into princes when you kiss them, and certain species might even make you trip your balls off.

What else? Human history is apparently littered with frogs. And since we of the OSR like to mine the past to provide the fuel that will carry us into the future, we are gonna need a hell of a lot more Frog Monsters. Thus, I declare next week Frog Week at American Barbarica. Any and all are welcome to join me. Run Temple of the Frog or The Fane of St. Toad for your group. Make a frog-relevant post on your blog, or just drop Froghemoths all over your hexmap.

Make Frog Monsters rain like, well, frogs!

sorry for the stream-of-consciousness nature of this post. I have completely excised sleep from my life.

Befuddled by Ensorcelation

2010-03-15T23:40:00.000-07:00

American Barbarica needs to hire an assistant. Emerald City Comic Con, two game sessions, 40 hours of jerk work, Final Fantasy XIII AND God of War 3 is more than the staff can keep up with in a week's time...

The Dark Age, session 3. (3.15.2010)

After a brief discussion, the party decides that allowing the Lucky Brigand to escape may be a bad idea after all, and they run off in search of him. A fresh trail of blood leads into the (unexplored) eastern portion of the dungeon. The trail leads them to a series of teleportation rooms, which the heroes were able to navigate without too much trouble if one discounts the fact that the party no longer knows exactly where they are.

Next they discovered a (former) library, now largely empty thanks to the group of skeletons tossing book after book into the blazing fireplace. The flue was closed, meaning that the room was filled with smoke and so would have made for a difficult battlefield had Elroy not turned every one of the skeletons in, like, a second.

Gary and Smallie tried to salvage what they could from the fireplace, and discovered a large locket while sifting the ashes. Enshrined therein was an image of a beautiful young girl who bore a striking resemblance to Ilyria Moonrider, but the inscription read "Persephone, High Priestess". Curious.

Soon, the party regained the trail of bandit blood, and set off into a long, alcove filled corridor. An enormous, simian hand shot out of one of the alcoves, grasping Gary and providing the first ever appearance of a Giant Monster Arm in one of my campaigns! Smallie Biggs struck out with Grace (his axe), scoring a critical hit and splitting open the knuckles of the ridiculous beast. The Arm released Gary and faded from view. For now.

At last they reached the end of the corridor, where they caught up with the Lucky Brigand. Unfortunately, said brigand was floating face-down in a well. Elroy, however, suspected that the brigand may have been holding his breath to feign death (which was in fact the case). Gould fished him out with his ten foot pole, and rough interrogation ensued.

They learned that the leader of the brigand gang was one Gabriel Tycho, son of Moonville's mayor (l'il PA easter egg, for the nerd elite), and that it was the brigands and not some hoodoo Phantom who kidnapped the girl...

In Conclusion:

1. A phantom witchfinder who may not be a phantom after all.

2. A kidnapped girl who looks just like a dead girl.

3. Rich kids playing brigand.

4. And a group of Skeletons with a burning hatred for the written word. (see what I did there?)

Methinks property values are about to suffer in the sleepy town of Moonville.

True Believer.

2010-03-14T20:35:00.000-07:00

This weekend the staff of American Barbarica drove up to Seattle for Emerald City Comic Con. Here's a pic of me with Earth's Mightiest Hero. Please excuse the retarded look on my face. You try standing next to Stan Lee without grinning like an idiot. Excelsior!

Carcosa Daycare Center

2010-03-10T22:41:00.000-08:00

This would look amazing on a collectable plate.

Moldvay, interrupted

2010-03-08T12:54:00.000-08:00

Tonight's game is postponed due to:

We'll return to normal programming next week. I haven't watched wrasslin' for many years. Is the Ultimate Warrior still alive?

Elf Goes Ape!

2010-03-04T14:47:00.000-08:00

Busy week at American Barbarica HQ. My lack of posting was aided and abetted by the news that HBO has greenlit a 10 part series based on George R.R. Martin's A Game of Thrones, and my subsequent reading of same. Holy Hotsauce, Batpeople! I have no reason to suspect that the HBO production will be anything short of smashing.

Anyway, here are the highlights from this week's Moldvay sesh:

The Dark Age session 2 (3.2.2010)

When we last left our heroes, they were taking fire from a pair of bandits. Rather, make that "taking fire from a bandit and his buddy who lacked a missile weapon and was mostly there for moral support and to hurl insults at Our Heroes". I had decided on the fly that the pair were basically Laurel and Hardy clones, but it didn't matter much because they were dead like one round later.

Next, the PCs discovered a room filled with sixteen statues of women (exactly the number of Sybelline Sisters burned by Anton Phantom). The room had a pair of ornate doors with large keyholes who's locks proved too stout for Gould's picks. Lacking a reliably silent method of entry, the group moved on (but not before Smallie spotted a slime-filled corridor through the keyhole of one of the doors).

The next room housed a magically silenced meditation chamber, the ceiling of which was painted to resemble the night sky. The constellations were rendered in a phosphorescent paint that glowed upon exposure to torch light. Ivorique did not like this room. Exploration was cut short when Smallie Biggs disturbed a couple of Cave Locusts in the adjacent room, kicking off a hilariously slapstick battle in which Smallie, Elroy and Gary chased seemingly-unkillable (unhittable, even) bugs about the room, rolling critical misses like they were being paid to do so.

The party fared better in the dormitory, where they surprised a quartet of bandits arguing over a poker game. Smallie Biggs spent the surprise round not threatening to kill anybody, and through parley and palaver (i.e. roleplaying), disarmed the situation before it could erupt into violence. The brigands themselves were oddly genteel for their occupation, and one of them had a very fine sword such as a nobleman (or a nobleman's son) would wear. An accord was reached, and the PCs agreed to stick to looting the east side of the dungeon while the brigands continued their plunder of the west. (Elroy mentioned something about being there to rescue the kidnapped girl as well...). This was a pretty cool interchange, and a refreshing change from the "kick in door/kill/loot/repeat" cycle that D&D sometimes (often) falls prey to, and I was pretty happy with my players.

Which is why I was somewhat surprised when, moments later, Ivorique Whitelight's player displayed a keen grasp of medieval diplomacy and said "Fuck this, I shoot an arrow at one of them" just as the party was about to leave, setting Adventurer/Brigand relations back to the state they were in fifteen minutes previous. Ivorique is, apparently, quite mentally ill.

At this point, D&D began to resemble an online match of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. Headshots fell like heavy rain and three of the brigands were dead in seconds. The survivor was tied up and questioned, but was too terrified of the Elf to offer any useful information to the party. Disgusted, Smallie Biggs untied him and told him to run home. However, the lucky survivor just ran off into another part of the dungeon. Hmm...

Some intriguing items were looted from the freshly murders corpses, however. Gary took a shine to the fancy longsword. A trunk full of stolen goods were discovered, as well as several evil looking masks made from duck skin, wax and horsehair. That's weird. Why would a brigand want to dress up as a monster?

Find out in the shocking continuation!

Moonville Rumor Mill

2010-02-26T14:46:00.001-08:00

Rumors Heard Around Moonville

(% 50 chance of being true. Better yet- let your players decide!)

Roll D20 for the latest gossip (roll D6 times if carousing)

1. A young girl once saw an incarnation of the goddess Demeter on the hill above Moonville. The Sybelline Sisterhood was created in her honor and a convent was built on the spot where the goddess appeared.

2. 120 years ago, a blight destroyed the crops around Moonville. The next year a new Priestess of the Sisterhood was named, and that fall saw the largest harvest on record.

3. The Moonstone that litters Moonville's hinterlands is actually the result of an orbital collision that destroyed one of the planet's moons in prehistoric times. The Elven Brotherhood of the Fifth Luminary hopes to one day reconstruct the missing moon.

4. Garlan Grellhelm, the local miller, was a great adventurer who lost an arm and an eye while rescuing little Alan Parsnip from an Owlbear.

5. Anton Phantom, Witchfinder, fell in love with the high priestess of the Sisterhood but later accused her of witchery.

6. Anton Phantom raped the High Priestess of the Sybelline Sisterhood and had her burned at the stake to cover his crime.

7. Phantom and his men discovered evidence of devil worship in the convent above Moonville, and had all sixteen Sisters burned as witches.

8. Anton Phantom disappeared while exploring the catacombs below the convent on the hill above Moonville.

9. Anton Phantom and his men were in fact a group of brigands who posed as Witchfinders in order to relieve poor villages of their nubile virgins.

10. Last year's crop was the largest harvest seen in nearly a century.

11. Phantastic Phrank, the town wino, is really a six hundred year old wizard who sells magic words to children in order to afford hooch.

12. A group of teenage boys dressed as monsters have been robbing local businesses at night.

13. The field mice of Moonville report to Aldefonse Alderweg, a local druid.

14. A local priest named Fripp the Pennylacker has a shady past and has been connected to several thieves guilds over the years, including the Dabblers, The League of Crows, and The House of Tasteful Gentlemen.

15. Ilyrion Moonrider was an elven knight of the Willow Kingdom in southern Darkmere. He was bitten by a Drow and thus contracted Drowism. Before fleeing the surface, he left his daughter Ilyria in the care of Garlan Grellhelm.

16. An Ogre Magi has taken up residence along the Old Kingdom Road, near Rider's Roost.

17. The Brotherhood of the Fifth Luminary possess a recipe for turning powdered Moonstone into a magical (and possibly narcotic) cosmetic.

18. Stephen Starlark is a wizard and a recent arrival in Moonville. Geraldine Gorgamort swears she's seen him in the woods conversing with a green dragon.

19. Edvard Kettleblack is jealous of Stephen Starlark and has made repeated attempts to humiliate the handsome young wizard. Somehow, each of Edvard's "pranks" have blown up in his face (often in a literal sense).

20. A necromancer named Phelix Phobos prowls the blasted heath west of Moonville, and has been conducting grotesque experiments on the local wildlife.

The Bride of Hell, part 1.

2010-02-24T12:33:00.000-08:00

This week we kicked off The Dark Age campaign, which is the name of my Moldvay Mondays game. I am exceedingly pleased with the results thus far. The group is basically the same crew that got me back into D&D about five years ago, only now I'm behind the screen. The games are short (three hours exactly), but we were able to get a lot done in the first session, considering that character creation and preamble took about an hour.

I wanted to do something pretty traditional, more High/Dark/Romantic/Whatever Fantasy than Swords & Sorcery. I imagineered a basic village/ wilderness/ Big Ass Dungeon setup (Moonville, Darkmere, and As-yet-to-be-named, respectively), and let everything else unfold from there.

Here's how it all went down...

"The town of Moonville is famous for two things: the Moonstone from which it takes it's name, and The Moonville Phantom. The Legend of The Phantom goes back almost a century, and is said to be the ghost of The Abominable Anton Phantom, a witchfinder of terrible reputation. The Phantom is said to ride out when the moon is just right, haunting the marshes and moors of Darkmere, looking for wayward travelers to waylay and drag off to Hell. Many claim to have seen the Phantom, but most folks regard him as merely a legend, a bit of local color and a cautionary tale to keep children in line.

That all changed last night, when The Abominable Anton Phantom stole Moonville's most beloved daughter from her bed and carried her off to Hell."

The Dark Age, session 1. (2.22.2010)

People from all over the Duchy of Darkmere are making their way to the little town of Moonville, to attend the wedding of Drax of Darkmere (noble son of the Paraduke). Drax is set to be married to a beautiful half-elven girl named Ilyria Moonrider, the adopted daughter of a local miller. Though considered scandalous by the nobility, the union of a young nobleman and a lowly peasant girl has captured the hearts of the common folk of Darkmere. The wedding is scheduled to take place in one week, and the groom and his honor guard should be arriving in the next several days.

Two of the PCs (Ivorique and Smallie) are natives to Moonville.

Ivorique Whitelight is an elven girl whose father is the head of an elven religious order called the Brotherhood of the Fifth Luminary, which seems to place some sort of religious significance on Moonstone. The Brotherhood does not allow women, so Ivorique is free to get in all the adventures she wants.

Smallie Biggs is the town drunk, an oddly charismatic Dwarf with an axe named "Grace". Smallie likes to keep his axe bloody and his whistle wet.

Elroy the Bugler Boy is a young Cleric from Burberry Flats, a somewhat naive young fellow who seems perpetually stuck in the most awkward stage of puberty. He's in Moonville to work as a musician during the wedding festival, and his low Charisma is attributed to the fact that he blows his damn bugle every chance he gets.

Gould O'Fawl is a Thief with a business plan. He hopes to amass enough gold to one day create a system by which money can be lent to a common borrower, who will then repay it at a high rate of interest. He is certain that this "Banking System" will revolutionize the world, if only he can pick enough pockets to get it up and running. At first I just thought this was an entertaining idea, but then I realized that it meant that the setting currently lacks any sort of banking system, which opens up some interesting possibilities for the future.

Finally, E. Gary Gobblecox is a Fighter. I should probably explain that name. A long time ago one of the PCs in another campaign ran afoul of the Random Harlot Table and ended up with a nemesis named Regina Gobblecox, who vexed him for the better part of his life. Since then, every harlot the PCs meet, from the Slovenliest Trull to the Richest Panderer, has been a member of the Gobblecox family. Brother to Regina, Sabrina, Samantha, and Trixie, Gary is the only male heir to the Gobblecox name and, since he was stolen at birth, has not had to live with the shame of his sisters' sordid reputation. Yes, I do play D&D with a bunch of adult ten year olds. Some things just don't change.

Ahem. After a night of revelry, the PCs were awakened by the sounds of a woman screaming, a man laughing, and what sounded like a horse's hooves pounding across the rooftops. They get outside just in time to catch a glimpse of a woman being carried off by a spectral horseman. The faint scent of brimstone hangs on the breeze, and smoldering hoof prints cover the thoroughfare. Following the prints, the PCs find that some of them lead directly up walls and across the rooftops. Soon the streets are filled with gossiping citizens babbling about the Moonville Phantom.

After some quick chitchat with the locals and a few rolls on the Moonville Rumors table, the PCs set off on the Phantom's trail, which brings them to a ruined convent on a hillside above town, just before dawn. Entering, they find themselves in Hell's Vestibule (level one of the campaign dungeon). The entryway is filled with graffiti spanning several decades, left there by teenagers who visit the ruins as a dare, or sometimes as a "Lover's Lane".

The party sets off down one of the many branching passages leading out of the entryway, and Into Adventure! The Party kinda scored right off the bat, finding a clerical scroll, some blank parchment, and a bit of gold in the very first room they tried (I stocked the map using a combination of Moldvay and Mentzer charts, so fortune smiled on them). Gould got lucky when a needle trap he missed failed to fire properly, but Ivorique and Gary balanced things out by getting into some Giggle Gas. The ensuing laughter alerted a pair of wandering Bandits, who surprised the party but promptly blew their missile attacks.

...and that's where we left off.

A grand time was had by all. Best line of the night goes to Smallie during the following exchange, as Gould and Smallie were listening at a pair of doors:

Gould: (after a failed Hear Noises roll): "Smallie, lend me your ear."

Smallie: "Nope. I only got two and they's attached".

Worth every penny of the 15xp I awarded them. Comedy Gold, True Believer!

Tune in next week for the Shocking Continuation!

Radar Zombies of Vanth

2010-02-24T05:11:00.000-08:00

(click to embiggen)

I just found this l'il buddy on my hard drive. I don't remember when or even why I drew it, but it was in a file called "Honeymoon on Antares"*. I wish I would have found him in time to stat him up and submit him to Jeff's Easy Peasy EC PC Contest. Dammit! Slasirack MkII would've been a pretty tough act to beat though (congratulations, Tom!). Also, this reminds me that I need to learn how to draw hands and feet before I die, because all the fancy coloring in the world ain't gonna fix this awkward fellow...

Now that I think about it, I really need to "come across a copy of the ultra-rare EC module by that name at a flea market" one of these days. Wink.

Moldvay Mondays

2010-02-19T01:27:00.000-08:00

So I've agreed to run a second campaign on Monday nights, in addition to our regular Sunday game. I also have a wife, a band, and a full time job, so taking on an extra game pretty much guarantees I'll be dead by Easter. (Or a lich).

I'm running it under Moldvay. Our Sunday game is an BECMI/AD&D hand-wavy hackjob, reeking of paperback pulps and held together with great swaths of science fantasy, which doesn't see enough airtime here due to the fact that some of it's players visit this blog. I can't very well have them finding out where I steal all my ideas from! (*cough* Mike Grell *cough*).

Some of the players in the new game are fans of what you might call "classic" (some might say "vanilla") fantasy, and may have expectations along those lines. This is fine with me, as I've recently come to the realization that I don't absolutely have to have robots and shit in all my games to make them fun. In fact, I'm actually pretty excited to see what I come up with by limiting* myself to what I consider the classic elements of medieval fantasy: Elves, Goblins, Wizards, and Dragons.

And the Devil. I mean, 80's occult hysteria is still fresh in my mind, and every campaign needs a villain. Why not go with the Big Daddy of Big Baddies?

*the irony of the usage of the word "limit" in this context is not lost here. Have I become so decadent that I see plain ol' magical creatures as passe? What am I, some kinda Indie Hipster? Frodo Lives, dammit!

Evil is a Good Marketing Strategy.

2010-02-17T09:43:00.000-08:00

I have to admit to a certain nostalgic thrill when I see people in the media trying to connect Dungeons & Dragons with violent crime. (the i09 article is a bit more informative).

I'm not being facetious here. There is a small part of me that misses the occult hysteria of the 80's. I was born in 1975 in a small town in the eastern Ohio Valley. I became aware of the words "Dungeons & Dragons" some time around 1980, and those words fascinated me. I don't think I even understood that there was a game to go along with those two words, I just understood that they meant something ...powerful. Not since Treasure Island have two words combined to form so complete and elegant a snare for a young man's imagination. I was caught.

Mind you, it would be some time before I ever got a chance to actually play the game. The years between my (practically gnostic) intuition of the Words and the Deed of gaming itself were spent in intense preparation. I presided over pitched battles between Skeletor and my elderly house cat, Ezmerelda (her fish-breath was my first exposure to a Save-or-Die effect). I battled grape vines in a backyard Mirkwood with my trusty stick, Excalibur (plucked from my sandbox by a Boy King for the crown of an Appalachian Albion), and I was lulled to sleep each night by the scratching and popping of Disneyland Records presents: The Hobbit from my Fisher Price record player. All in all, I went about my trailer park vigil in a manner befitting a young paladin.

Eventually I met some other kids who knew about D&D, and I discovered that there was an actual game to go with the name. Their parents were friends with my folks, having met through community theater. My dad was a card carrying 80's New Ager and my mom was basically humoring him, so community theater was sort of a given. It was one of the only creative outlets for non-rednecks that our town had to offer, so the theater was full of all sorts of wierdos (mainly ex hippies, Unitarians, and various types of liberal democrats, but at the time I was only capable of understanding them as "weirdos"). The theater itself was old and creepy, haunted in fact, and happened to be next door to the only hobby store our little town ever had.

I remember that it was the Spring Break of 1984 and I had gone down to the theater with my parents while they worked on the stage set for some sort of fairy tale-based play for children (I think it might have been Jack and the Beanstalk). Most of the other parents had brought their kids down as well, and there were maybe ten of us in all. I was definitely the youngest.

Anyway, these kids were a few years older than me, and most of them seemed slightly sinister (read: "heavy metal"), so I felt privileged to be hanging out with them. We spent the week exploring the place, which was pretty big and had lots of twisting hallways in the backstage area. One of the kids was the son of the theater's owner, and he showed us the trapdoor that led from the stage to the basement. It may as well have been an entrance into Philotomy's Mythic Underworld.

[This story takes place in Marietta Ohio. Marietta was founded by the Ohio Company in 1788. It is the oldest city in Ohio and was the first permanent American settlement in the Northwest Territory. Long before that (800 BC-700 AD give or take), it was the site of a Moundbuilder city. It was also an abolitionist town and was part of the Underground Railroad. I mention all of this as background for why some buildings in the the oldest part of the city have their basements connected by tunnels. Most of them are sealed, or flooded, but a few are still accessible.]

I'd like to tell you that this was the James Dallas Egbert III part of the story, where we dressed up in cloaks swiped from the costume room and I was initiated into the mysteries of D&D while exploring the crumbling catacombs beneath the city, but it isn't. One of the adults caught on pretty fast and ran our asses out of there before one of us got killed. So we went to the hobby shop next door and played D&D.

I don't remember much about that game, save that one of the other kids had their PC murder my Thief (shot in the back with a crossbow!). I'm not even sure why that happened. I didn't care. The important thing is that I now understood that my life would be utterly useless until I got a copy of the Mentzer Basic Set, which I spent next several weeks begging my parents for.

My mom resisted at first. She's a pretty cool lady but she'd heard the rumors: D&D makes kids worship the devil! That guy from Bosom Buddies had lost his mind playing that shit! There was no way she was gonna let her son be carried off to hell on the back of some evil unicorn!

Of course, all of the controversy surrounding D&D just made it more attractive to me, and I continued to play as much as possible, usually when staying over at friends' houses. My neighbor had a Moldvay set, and I used to copy the monster stats into my notebook by hand so that I'd have a copy for myself! I was enrolled in a Christian school at the time, and one of my friends got busted with a copy of the Dungeon Master's Guide in his desk just before school let out for the summer. It may as well have been a gun. We were dragged into the principal's office for interrogation. Our parents were called in. Flyers were sent home telling parents what to look for. An emergency PTA meeting was held. I don't think the school made the connection that we were also the kids with the best math and reading scores in our class, but whatever. None of it really help the case for my getting that Red Box for my birthday.

I don't want to paint the wrong picture of my mother. I think she knew that there was no real danger in my playing D&D. But she didn't know all of the kids I was hanging out with, and I think she just didn't want me to play just in case it was dangerous. By that point D&D was getting a pretty bad rap, so I can't blame her for wanting to be cautious. But ultimately, the hysteria made me feel like I was engaging in some secret ritual, and that was sometimes almost as much fun as the game itself. (this phenomena supports my theory that the PMRC was actually a marketing campaign created by the record industry).

Eventually the Dungeons & Dragons cartoon hit the airwaves. My mom saw it and I think she somehow decided that D&D was the same as He-Man and G.I. Joe, and was therefore safe for her son. I do not pretend to understand the criteria by which she made this judgement, but I decided it was best not to ask too many questions. That Christmas, I got my Basic Set!

Maybe she was just waiting for me to get closer to the "Ages 10 and up" recommended on the box. Maybe it was actually that she had somehow fallen under the sway of Satan himself. Perhaps she was just too busy trying to prevent my father from evaporating altogether. Whatever the reason, the forces of evil had either been defeated by or embraced by my family in the winter of 1983, and I've either been battling or riding with the Devil ever since.

Depends who you ask, I guess.

Nova Mephista

2010-01-29T04:32:00.000-08:00

Hex XXXX

"The frontier city of Nova Mephista gained it's independence less than a decade ago, declaring itself Free of the City State of Python after a long and bloody labor strike. Since that time, the city has thrived under an uneasy alliance of Pfung bosses and Aether Barons, and has become a symbol of hope for Free Men, and for those who would be Free.

However, the Dark Yogis have eyes unblinking, and many fear it is only a matter of time before the coils of Python again engulf the city. Rumors haunt the night, strange tales of serpents who walk as men, of Bone Men hiding in plain sight, and of the Moustacchio Demoniac restored (though this last only in whispers, for Asmodeus has jealous ears).

Evil gossip is part and parcel to the adventurer's trade, and Nova Mephista is short on neither. New faces pass through the city every day, skin burnt by the Radium Desert, or frostbitten by the cruel winds of the Hammers of Hastur, eyes forever changed by The Weirding. They ride through the East Gate at dawn, only to be carried in a coffin through the West Gate at dusk."

-from An Enumeration of Acheron by Trep LeFletch,

Pennanggalan Press (publication date unknown)

Gamma the Gathering

2010-01-29T00:53:00.000-08:00

WotC announced today (via Twitter) that October 2010 would see the release of a new Gamma World rule book and box set (the box set is even called Famine in Fargo). I'm man enough to admit that, despite my better sense, I was pretty excited by the announcement. Then I thought to myself "I wonder how long it will take them to completely destroy my other favorite game".

It took less than an hour. At least that's how long it took me to learn of the new game's randomized, collectible card aspect. Huh? Really? Is WFRP3 really selling that well?

I'm impressed, Wizards. That's a new record for dream-smashing, even for you guys.

You dicks.

iPad in Traveller Terms

2010-01-27T11:12:00.000-08:00

I'm thinking that the iPad's specs place it firmly in TL8. That puts us one step closer to TL9 and all the gravity we can manipulate!

D&D 1, Cancer 0.

2010-01-22T03:39:00.000-08:00

In April of 2008 I was diagnosed with colon cancer. Needless to say, the news was crushing. I've talked about this a bit on my (largely dormant) other blog, but haven't said much about it here. Mostly that's because it's a bummer to write about. It should suffice to say that the last two years of my life would quite literally have killed me had it not been for the love and support of my wife, my family, and the truly amazing group of friends I surround myself with.

One of the more interesting things about my cancer experience, at least as far as this blog is concerned, is the role that gaming played in my recovery. The entire time I was sick (give or take maybe three months where things got really bad), I was running a weekly D&D game. Granted, there were times when "running a game" simply meant sitting around the table with my group and talking about nerdly pursuits, but all in all I am quite proud of what we were able to accomplish, especially given the situation I was in.

A lot of people who go through extended medical torture find that they benefit immensely from the kind of simple mental exercise we usually take for granted. The poisons that debilitate the body also enervate the mind, and Chemotherapy is like an Intellect Devourer. That's why you see so many people doing crossword puzzles and Sudoku at the Oncologist's office. For me, gaming provided a kind of active mental engagement that kept my mind tethered to my body, like a silver cord on the Astral Plane. I honestly believe that every hospital and nursing home in the world should have an RPG club.

The reason I'm bringing all this up is because of this post by Randall at RetroRoleplaying. Randall's wife is in recovery from oral cancer and they are one of the MILLIONS of families in the United States without health insurance. Cancer is not cheap. I do have health insurance and I am still waaaay over my head in hospital bills. Anyway, Randall has set up a fund to help pay some of their bills. Anyone who donates to this fund receives pdf copies of two issues of The Grimoire (a D&D fanzine published in the late 70's), the awesomely-named "Second Grimoire of Pharesm the Bright-Eyed" (a house rules document from one of Randall's BECMI game in the 80's), and a special edition version of Microlite74.

But wait. You may want to put on a hat because your brain is about to explode. Some truly wonderful person has donated a grognard's wet dream, an Olde Schoole treasure trove worthy of Acererak himself. Check this shit out:

Yeah, that's the Brown Box. The BROWN one. And yeah, those are all the supplements. And hey, that looks like the Arduin Grimoire on there too. Chainmail? Check. And... wait a second. Is that? Naw... it couldn't be. Could it? I'm sure it's probab-OH MY GOD THAT'S BOOTY AND THE BEAST!!! EROL OTUS!!! EROL OTUS!!! HOLY CRAP!!!

Wow. I actually pooped my pants a little when I saw all this stuff. Whosoever makes the highest donation by February 5th, 2010 shall receive this fabled hoard. That's pretty cool. Even cooler is that they're keeping the donations on a strictly personal basis, meaning that some foundation or whatever isn't going to donate five grand and scoop you on this stuff. Actual human gamers have a very good chance of being the highest bidder!

I know that someday the real world will have a Clerical spell list that includes a "Cure Cancer" spell. In the mean time, maybe you can help out someone who could use it. It's a tough time to give, and there's a lot of people in the world right now who need help, but if you have something you can spare then, well, every little bit helps. I know this from personal experience.

And if you're one of those lucky people who has a little more to spare, then you might just find yourself the proud owner of some amazing D&D relics. I know I'd be proud, anyway. But don't let me catch you selling it on ebay. I'll kill you if you sell this stuff. Play it until the day you die.

Oh yeah. If you DO end up winning, maybe you could kick ol' Booberry that copy of Booty and the Beast. It's dangerous for one person to have all that awesomeness.

Understating the Obvious

2010-01-21T11:52:00.000-08:00

Thanks to Nick for pointing this out.

Vaguely entertaining read at the WotC blog in which a staffer admits that 4e's take on magic items is actually pretty, well, non-magical. I'm honestly a bit surprised that the Master Control Program allowed this post to escape into the wilds of the internet.

The overall gist is "You can't have certain items because they work outside our design principles and game mathematics". This gem in particular makes my head hurt and my heart ache: "[PCs need] a minimum number of magic items (three) to remain effective, and the PC can be expected to possess double this number or more* magic items all usable at the same time. These two decisions lead to the conclusion that magic item powers must be small and preferably infrequent, mostly daily powers with moderate to minor effects, or encounter powers or properties with minor effects."

I've played 4e and found it to be kinda fun (for what it is), and I don't share the utter vitriol that many grognards seem to have toward it. This is probably because I have let go of the notion that 4e is in any way, shape, or form a "legitimate edition of D&D". This was likely a survival mechanism my brain created to prevent me from walking around punching game designers in the face out of frustration and rage. Regardless, I'm really happy to be playing a game in which magic works because I say it does, not because it agrees with my calculator.

*That's more magic items than Cugel, Rhialto, or even frikkin' Harry Potter carry, by the way.

Emanations from the Mythic Underworld

2010-01-20T22:33:00.000-08:00

Tonight I discovered the following passage in Jeff Vandermeer's excellent City of Saints and Madmen:

"We wonder now if there ever were such a dream as above ground, or if this place has always been the reality and we simply deluding ourselves. We shamble through this darkness, through the foul emanations of the fungus, like lost souls in the Nether World... Today, we beseech them to end it, for we could hear their laughter all around us, could glimpse the shadows of their passage, and we are past fear. End it, do not toy with us. It is clear now that here, on their territory, they are our Masters. I looked over my notes last night and giggled at my innocence. "Degenerate traces of a once-great civilization" indeed. We have passed through so many queer and ominous chambers, filled with otherworldly buildings, otherworldly sights- the wonders I have seen! Luminous purple mushrooms pulsing in the darkness. Creatures that can only be seen while they smile, for their skin reflects their surroundings. Eyeless, pulsating, blind salamanders that slowly ponder the dead darkness through other senses. Winged animals that speak in voices. Headless things that whisper our names..."

I'm going to transcribe this passage onto a sheet of paper, along with a crudely-scrawled map on the other side, and tuck it into my campaign binder. The next time my players discover some musty old book that I've neglected to detail (a not-uncommon occurrence), it is very likely that said book will have only a single page that has proven resistant to the ravages of time, and this will be that page.

No Exceptions, No Whining.

2010-01-01T12:40:00.000-08:00

Today I told my players that 2010 may as well be 1980 for all I care, and that they'd be requiring their AD&D 1e Player's Handbooks for the foreseeable future. 3D6 down the line, no exceptions, no whining.

My gaming resolutions for 2010 are as follows: to keep it loose, to define nothing until I have to, to say yes to every good and bad idea my players throw at me, ...AND TO INCLUDE CHIMPANZEES AS A PLAYABLE CHARACTER RACE!!!

1980 is gonna be a good year. I can just tell.

Burnout.

2009-09-14T17:30:00.000-07:00

After running D&D nearly every sunday for almost four years, I will go on record and admit that I have officially begun to hate D&D.

Meet Mr. Hong

2009-07-06T11:06:00.000-07:00

Mr. Hong is the proprietor of Hong's Lucky Leviathan Tea House in Feng Du province. He was a decorated officer in the Imperial Navy, a submarine captain who served with distinction in the campaign against the Daikaiju of Dokuro Island. Hong is a salty old man, as handy with a proverb as he is with a dirty joke. He is a good singer, especially fond of battle hymns. His Fish Head soup is legendary throughout the province.

The Lucky Leviathan Tea House holds many relics from Hong's naval career. Medals, ribbons, and commendations are draped over the shrine to Hotei (the largest in the province), and an enormous Steam Harpoon hangs above the bar. This makes the tea house a popular hangout for sailors and veterans, who love to hear Hong tell whoppers about his days at sea. Sometimes his tales turn melancholy and on these nights Hong closes early but his sad, drunken singing can be heard late into the night.

It is public knowledge that Hong's great grandfather was a Kappa, but broaching the subject is considered impolite and anyone who teases him on his heritage is likely to find themselves staring down the barrel of a Steam Harpoon.

"Illustration" by Booberry for American Barbarica

Duel of the Ultimate Weapons

2009-07-03T16:59:00.000-07:00

Today I paid a visit to Guardian Games to score a copy of OA1 Swords of the Daimyo. The dude behind the counter asked if I was interested in the Legend of Five Rings CCG, because they're sponsoring a tournament tonight and the top prize is a samurai sword. The sword was on display and was suitably impressive looking for something that was obviously designed as a promotional item.

While chatting, I mentioned that giving away weapons as contest booty is always a crapshoot because you never know who the winner is going to be. I mean, for all you know it could be some guy who's trained all his life just to win that sword and take it on a killing spree. This was just an offhanded comment not really meant to be taken seriously. However, it would soon be made clear to me that the notion was not unique to myself because the dude began to articulate his contingency plan for exactly such a disastrous turn of events.

What followed was a slightly psychotic discussion about how one would best defend oneself against a lone swordsman in a retail environment. Other medieval weapons, apparently also kept on the premises, were integral to the plan. Disposal of corpses had also been objectively thought out. It seemed, to my ears at least, a workable defense plan.

Game stores and comic shops are the only real public forum for these kinds of discussions.

After leaving the store, I made a mental note never to start shit or try and go on a killing spree in Guardian Games. They are ready.

Two Men Enter, One Samurai Leaves

2009-07-01T10:34:00.000-07:00

After a day of brainstorming and a flood of ideas, Sword Opera has emerged in my mind as a clear winner for my Dungeon Alchemy project. Pete Mullen’s amazing cover to Ruins & Ronin cleared up any remaining doubts. I adore Pete’s stuff and this new piece is positively spellbinding:

It's perfect. I generally find Pete's work mindblowing, but this one kicked my brain a few feet further from my head than I could have expected.

I’m still vaguely amused by the concept of The Children’s Crusade, but it’s a one trick pony and would almost certainly fail under long term play. Also, since I started trying to organize my thoughts on the two settings, the word count on Sword Opera (consisting mainly of a lot of free writing and half sentences) is nearly eight times that of the Children’s Crusade. Last, The Children’s Crusade would definitely be a game about something (regardless of how dumb that thing is), whereas Sword Opera isn’t about anything. And that’s the way I want my games to be. Games About Things expect you to engage them in a specific way, whereas Games That Are Not only require that you let your hair down and have a good time. The latter seems a lot more attractive to this 34 year old DM.

It is my promise that Sword Opera will never be about anything.

Here are a couple of the ideas/goals I have for this project:
- a medium size sandbox to explore
- lots of NPCs
- expanded rules for Intelligent Swords, because all magical swords will be intelligent
- a fairly brutal set of Critical Hit charts including plenty of dismemberment
(which brings us to)
- ways to replace lost limbs with cyborg bits. When I say cyborg bits, I’m talking Shogun Warrior style: big ass, failure prone robot arms that can shoot off their fists as missile weapons.

I had been thinking of doing this thing as a kitchen sink kinda deal, but I think it would be better to provide some limits on the setting. It’s generally more rewarding for me to pick a handful of elements and find ways to make them fit together. I think it also makes for a better result. Then I try and envision it as a lost pilot for an 80's cartoon series. If I can see it clearly I know I'm on the right track. I’m still choosing exactly which elements I want to work with, but my current 10 word pitch is “Mythical Samurai Western with Hella Weird Monsters and Robot Fists”.

For the purposes of this blog, any rule info I post will be in Retro Clone terms to make it more generally useful to anyone likely to use it in the first place.

Sword Opera

2009-06-30T02:42:00.000-07:00

Option #2 is a sandbox setting inspired by Wuxia/ Kung Fu movies. It's a bit of a kitchen sink, drawing additional elements from Gamma World and Spaghetti westerns. It pretty much sprang from my love of the visual aesthetic of Afro Samurai (even though I can never make out exactly what the hell is going on in that show). In most episodes I've seen, the protagonist (I think) is usually walking around villages that look like they could somehow be found in both ancient Japan and the Wild West. Samurai Jack also trod similar visual territory. Frequently these towns are also lit by old neon signs, further blurring the lines of time and place. It's kinda like someone had the idea to set Blade Runner in Deadwood. The effect, to me at least, is an arresting, dreamlike atmosphere that I'd love to experience first hand, at least if I was a badass who could wield a katana without accidently cutting off my own dick.

As kids, we loved Oriental Adventures. It's only drawback was a criminal lack of illustrations. Asian history and mythology are an easy sell for D&D. It has the fantasy tri-force of Sword, Knight, and Dragon, as well as tons of the weirdest monsters ever dreamed up. It's very rich stuff, still provoking a reaction in me 20 + years later. I mean, if you were a kid growing up in the midwest in the 80's, chances were pretty good that you had a pair of nunchaku purchased from a flea market, or at least some throwing stars got from the county fair. Extra points if you spent hours trying to recreate the training sequence from A Nightmare on Elm Street pt 4. We were all pajama ninjas, and those aren't the kind of memories that ever leave a man.

In creating a kitchen sink-style sandbox, my aim would be to provide a handful of dials that I can adjust as needed. There'd be parts of the setting where the "Heartbreakingly Beautiful Traditional Mythology" dial is turned way up, and others where the "Grindhouse Kung Fu movie", "Steampunk Western" and "Crazy Anime Weirdness" dials get involved. There's something really compelling to me about the idea of a wandering Ronin cutting down a mountain village full of Hungry Dead on his way to battle the Evil Cyborg Ninja that killed his Sensei, only to learn that said Ninja was merely one of five highly specialized assassins employed by a criminal clan of shapeshifting dragons to make the aforementioned Ronin's life hell.

If I'm being honest with myself, this campaign probably has a much higher chance of sustaining my interest over a longer period of time.

Rules I'd be looking at:
-Again, BECMI/Cyclopedia D&D with Oriental Adventures and Ruins & Ronin
-Gamma World/Mutant Future for weird monsters that fit further up the anime dial. Rather than being radiation-derived, I'd probably describe these creatures as the offspring of devils or products of Alchemy.
-Also, this setting would probably work really well with 4e, whose totally over-the-top character abilities are practically specific to this type of game. Had 4e been released as "Oriental Adventures 4e" rather than D&D 4e, nobody would be bitching. The 4e game I was running before we abandoned it to return to old schoole play was heavily influenced by asian mythology and it fit like a glove.

Fluff:
As I said, the visuals of Afro Samurai & Samurai Jack would be an influence, but the content much less so. Using one kitchen sink to inspire another is usually a bad idea. Therefore I'm looking at:
- The Bridge of Birds by Gary Hughart
- Jade Empire (video game)
- Across the Nightingale Floor by Lian Hearn

If I wanted to further blur the lines and go more "Journey to the West" I might replace one of the above with Ramesh Menon's beautiful novelization of the Ramayana. Rakshasa and Oni seem like they'd play well together.

Dark Horses Running

2009-06-30T02:30:00.000-07:00

I had one other idea for a campaign building exercise. I thought I was totally settled on the Arthurian one, but Runner Up won't leave my head and now seems to be shouting at me, so I'll present it here as well. I had originally wanted to get back to a more traditional vanilla High Fantasy setting, but I think I need to give the other one a chance to be heard before locking myself into the extended work of developing one or the other.

I'm going try and nail the two of them down into elevator pitches and see how my players react. One or the other will probably be the next campaign once Gammafrost winds down (which admittedly may be a while). Anyone who reads this and wants to throw their 2 cents in is also welcome to join the conversation.

In an Age of ahem Chivalry

2009-06-29T11:51:00.000-07:00

“In Camelot, the war isn’t going well. Villages are burning, more and more children are being kidnapped by the Fey, and Merlin fears that even the royal court has been compromised by changeling spies. The Knights are few and stretched thin, and the light of Excalibur has not been seen for years. But Merlin has a plan to turn back the forces of Chaos.

The Children’s Crusade is that plan. All over the realm, young boys and girls are being trained in the arts of espionage, insurgency, and guerilla warfare. These are their orders: “Play near the forest, get captured, escape and report. If you cannot escape, create as much havok as your little hands can manage and take a dozen of those Seelie bastards with you when you die”. Then they are hastily knighted and sent off to their doom.

These soldiers are poorly trained and almost certainly doomed to die in the forest. But war is hell, kids are lucky, and the Children’s Crusade may be our only hope.”

That’s the overall gist of American Barbarica’s new campaign. It’s silly, obviously, but that’s part of what attracts me to it. The idea of playing l’il knights trapped behind enemy lines started to crystallize after seeing this Penny Arcade strip proposal. Also, I’ve had the idea for a while that Harry Potter would be a lot cooler if more students had died like The Gashlycrumb Tinies. These, combined with the fact that I love Arthurian mythology and have always wanted to do something D&D with it, started to congeal in my head over the weekend.

I’m already probably circumventing Jeff’s Alchemical Recipe, but I don’t think the campaign police are going to kick down my door anytime soon. I’m not committed to a ruleset just yet. I think I want to let the themes cook a little longer and then look for the best fit.

I’m probably cheating by using mythology as a source of campaign fluff, but the fun thing about using myth for a role playing game is that you can bend it to your will and make it do whatever you want without simultaneously taking a dump on human culture (that’s what social networking sites are for). Arthuriana is a self-contradictory mess already anyway. If I want to combine Morgana and Nimueh into the same person, or model Merlin after Dick Cheney (they both have the Devil as a father, after all), or make Launcelot a robot or a dashing french Gnome, there’s no reason to feel guilty about it. The audience who shames me is sure to be small.

*Note: For the context of the setting, the terms "Knight" and "Adventurer" are pretty much interchangeable. It's a catchall name for all officially sanctions Agents of the Crown, including Fighters, Wizards, Clerics, and Thieves

Current list of inpirational books:
-Mallory’s Le Mort De Arthur OR T.H. White’s The Once and Future King - for the Arthur’n, though my recent purchase of Garry Gianni's and Marc Shultz's new Prince Valiant collection Far From Camelot may well unseat either of these.

-Poul Anderson’s Three Hearts and Three Lions - for the descriptions of Fairie

-Joseph Heller’s Catch 22 - For the ridiculous military satire.

Possible list of Rule bits:

BECMI/ Rules Cyclopedia D&D (my go to game)
Dark Ages Bestiary (from Whit Wolf's Dark Ages line)
Pendragon
Grimm"
and due to recent talk in my game group, I may even look at such heretical texts as the most recent edition of "The World's Most Popular Role Playing Game". Don't shoot me for mentioning it.

This week: More crap like this, an essay on the concept of Chivalry According to Mallory, some commentary on that Merlin show I hate to admit to liking, and ...The Questing Beast!
EDIT: If the Runner Up ends up capturing my heart, these posts may not all see the light of day.

Heeding the Call to Arms

2009-06-26T11:45:00.000-07:00

On wednesday of this week, the ever-awesome Jeff Rients gave us an alchemical recipe for a new campaign. Jeff's proposal is pretty similar to how I (and many others, I suspect) approach campaign planning, but I think his post nails down what is otherwise a pretty nebulous process into something more concrete and useable.

World building has always been a fascination for me, and one of the key elements of my attraction to Dungeon Mastering. The Gammafrost campaign is finally settling into the "sweet spot" of having just enough detail without overburdening the players (or myself) with loads of information that gets forgotten the moment the players leave the table. The sandbox is full enough to to play in without being overcrowded.

But you're never really done, are you?

Next week, American Barbarica kicks off a new campaign project. I have a vague idea of a starting point, but no clue whatsoever as to where the path will lead. It may very well be, as Jeff suggests, a complete trainwreck. It may even be a trainwreck that never sees so much as an afternoon's use, and that's fine. The point is to produce something to entertain myself, and to hope that someone else out there finds the process entertaining as well. I'll be using the weekend to try and sort out some of the pieces, and we're off to the races come monday morning.

American Barbarica

Isle of the Unknown and new blog

JOESKY WINS EDITION WAR

For Valentine's Day I Got You The Black Sleep of Kali Ma

Fresh Ink

Book Report: Realms of Crawling Chaos

Stoned Apes

Alchemical Item: Dehydrated Henchman

Raygun Safety and You.

Realms of the Crawling Chaos coming sooner than expected

Mk III Nullifier Helmet

Mystery in Space

If Erol Otus did pulp covers they might look like

Stinkin' out loud

Five games

Gamma River

Cryptic Alliance: The Sidekick Society

Gammazons

Back From the Grave/ Christmas Field Report

Tumblr

Barbarica At Large.

A Private Cosmos

Holy Mountain

How to start a Weird Science Fantasy game.

The Hall of Honored Dead

Cosmic Horror is, Like, Totally Harsh.

Art Hammer

And Another Thing

The Architect of Ruins

Swamp Yeti

Slobberwocky

The Phasic Swamps of Stygia Prime

Thanks for nothing, Uncle Ben

Lizard Folk

Wrestlevania Not In Stores!

The Grim Reaper Declares War on my Adolescence.

Hello Valhalla.

Pimp Lich

A Dumping Ground for Corpses and Information

The Stars My Decimation

Does Anybody Here Speak Neutral?

World's Best Dungeon Master

I Smell a Mystery!

God Bless The 10th Doctor...

Lycanthropic Skeletroid.

Drink Their Tears

1d30 Shocking Conclusions to Frog Week

We are not controlling transmission

Frog Week: Further Frogging

Frog Week: Choking Croaker

Frog Week: Sir Roderick Vile

Frog Week: Woolybullywug

Frog Week: Baba Gaga

Non-Controversy.

Save vs. Product Identity

A Plague of Frogs

Befuddled by Ensorcelation

True Believer.

Carcosa Daycare Center

Moldvay, interrupted

Elf Goes Ape!

Moonville Rumor Mill

The Bride of Hell, part 1.

Radar Zombies of Vanth

Moldvay Mondays

Evil is a Good Marketing Strategy.

Nova Mephista

Gamma the Gathering

iPad in Traveller Terms

D&D 1, Cancer 0.

Understating the Obvious

Emanations from the Mythic Underworld

No Exceptions, No Whining.

Burnout.

Meet Mr. Hong

Duel of the Ultimate Weapons

Two Men Enter, One Samurai Leaves

Sword Opera

Dark Horses Running

In an Age of *ahem* Chivalry

In an Age of ahem Chivalry