Random Encounters

Lin Carter: Explorations in Fantasy Part 2," Tolkien: A Look Behind the 'Lord of the Rings"

2012-02-26T18:12:00.001-09:00

I began this series on Lin Carter a long time back and am now just getting back to it. The reason for the long delay is I just wasn't sure what I was trying to prove. I believe that Lin Carter, while looked down upon too often by the establishment and fans of Fantasy and Sword and Sorcery, he is not given enough credit for the positive influence he has had upon the genre. Lin Carter was one of the first critical writers to take fantasy and its related genres seriously and to attempt to make the public at large view it as Literature (capital L intended). So after a long delay, here is my second love letter to the memory of Lin Carter.

This post is more of a retrospective then a review. I don't feel it is fare to review this work, as Carter was attempting to pioneer the idea that the Fantasy genre is not to be viewed as childish and non-academic. Mr. Carter was well read in the field and beyond. He shows it here. I would like you as the reader to keep in mind that when Carter was writing this, The Lord of the Rings (hereafter LotR) was more of a cult favorite and was not universally as well known as such pop-culture icons such as Batman or Superman. It isn't too far fetched to suggest that Carter, with the publication of this book helped bring pop-culture status to Tolkien's work.

First published in paper back form in March 1969 by Ballantine Books. There were numerous printings of this book, the latest in 2003. To the best of my knowledge, it is currently out of print. The edition I own is a fourteenth printing dated 1978.

Tolkien: A Look Behind The Lord of the Rings, is an insightful guide to the man who created Frodo, Bilbo, Gandalf and the gang. The first chapter, "The Lives and Times of Professor Tolkien" is a short biography, and is interesting, but as to information gained from reading it, if you've read any works about Tolkien before, you won't learn anything further. The same can be said of Chapter 2 which discusses Tolkien's involvement with the Inklings. This is tried and true Tolkienism that many an armchair Tolkien scholar has read numerous times before. What makes it different and special, is Carter is perhaps one of the first few to take The Lord of the Rings seriously, not as an entertainment, but as a serious work of Literature worthy of study.

Chapter 3 stands out with interest. Titled "Tolkien Today", it is a look at the good professor's other works such as his translation of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. The bulk of the chapter is Carter's discussion of "Tolkien's upcoming new LotR book The Silmarillion". I found it interesting, for it was written while Tolkien was still writing the book. As any fan of Tolkien knows, that work was published posthumously in 1977 by his son Christopher Tolkien. When Carter wrote this chapter, the professor's fan base was still slathering at the mouth in anticipation of The Silmarillion being published. There was much excitement for no one truly knew what the book would be about, and many were hoping for a sequel to LotR. Here, Carter discusses what he believes the book will be about. Being that I was very young when LotR first saw print and was thus a Johnny-Come-Lately, it made for a nice bit of history for me. Later editions of Carter's book included an editor's note dated January 1975 noting the death of J.R.R. Tolkien in 1973 and the fact that he was still in the midst of completing The Silmarillion at the time of his death.

Chapters 4 through 7 are nothing more then synopsis of The Hobbit and all three books of The Lord of the Rings. For anyone who is familiar with the books, there is nothing gained from the reading of these four chapters.

The interesting stuff begins in Chapter 8 where Carter discusses if LotR can fairly be read as satire, allegory or something else. Chapter 9 explores Tolkien's famous Andrew Lang lecture Tree and Leaf and how Tolkien's admiration of the fairy story factored into his writing. Carter uses this chapter as well to further define the genre of fantasy and to ponder what kind of fantasy LotR is (from the book):

Does it belong to the whimsy of James Stephen's The Crock of Gold or to the supernatural horror of H.P. Lovecraft's Weird Shadow Over Innsmouth? To the swashbuckling heroics of Robert E. Howard's "Conan" stories or the ironic symbolism of James Branch Cabell's Jurgen? To the high adventure of H. Rider Haggard's She or to the subtle legendry of Lord Dunsany's Idle Days on the Yann?...

Many more examples are given with no conclusion yet drawn.

Chapter 10 explores Tolkien's connection to the Epic. In true Carter fashion, he begins with a short history of the Epic and what an Epic entails. In this chapter, the author calls upon Homer and Gilgamesh, plus a few other works, show casing his wide range of literature read. Also discussed is if the epic can be classified as fantasy. This chapter, along with the following chapters of the book serve as a preview of sorts of his next book Imaginary Worlds.

The next chapter serves as a continuation of the history of the Epic. Carter begins with a discussion of the Argonautica then traces the art to the formation of the French epics "chansons de geste ("songs of deeds") which includes Song of Roland. The songs of deeds detail the heroics of Charlemagne. Carter spends a good deal of time examining Roland. He ends the chapter with an introduction to the topic of Chapter 12, the Romances of the late Middle Age.

Here Carter discusses how Romances made the addition of magicians and magic in general to the literature that is building towards Tolkien's work. He turns to a discussion of Amadis of Gaul, and his admiration for it. As he explains, the popularity of Amadis sprung a wealth of new romances, mostly imitators. Most of those works which followed the Amadis became so convoluted with the idea of topping the last, that they became dreary and nearly unintelligible. Carter is not afraid to tell his reader when he thinks something is crap; for instance, the end of this chapter includes his opinion of Edmund Spenser, author of The Fairie Queen. His opinion of Spenser is not good, as he attributes to him the death blow (of the literature of romance). More opinion of Spenser and The Fairie Queen is given in Carter's Imaginary Worlds.

Chapter 13 shows Carter's tastes in literature that can, without a doubt, be confined to the genre of Fantasy. He writes mostly of three men whom he gives credit to for creating fantasy. First up is William Morris, who Carter labels The Reformer; next is Lord Dunsany, The Aristocrat; last of his "big three" is Eric Rucker Eddison who Carter calls The Romancer. The major works of all three are discussed. In this chapter Carter also pays homage to: L. Sprague de Camp, Fletcher Pratt. H.P. Lovecraft, Robert E. Howard, Jack Vance and Mervyn Peak. He gives some attention to Peak's "Gormenghast trilogy".

In chapter 14, Carter puts forth what he considers to be the primary sources for Tolkien's ring trilogy. He gives much time to the Elder Edda and includes a list of names from the Edda. Amongst those names are many of the dwarven names used by Tolkien. Interestingly enough, the list includes a dwarf named Gandalf. Carter also looks in depth at the Siegfried Legend. Sometimes remembered as the legend of the dragon-slayer, the Siegfried tales includes magical rings amongst other similarities. His discussion of this ends with an examination of Richard Wagner's operas and their likeness to Tolkien's writings.

Chapter 15 "On the Naming of Names", explores the probable sources for many of Professor Tolkien's character names. Carter begins the chapter with a quick anecdote that fans of H.P. Lovecraft would find interesting. Carter relates a tongue-cheek-joke of Lovecraft naming one of his characters "the Comte d'Erlette", which he proposes is a play on the name August Derleth (this is based on the similarity of the sound of d'Erlette and Derleth, plus August Derleth was a correspondent of Lovecraft and Lovecraft knew that Derleth was descended from French nobility, but as an American citizen, Derleth could not retain a title of nobility). (On a side note, it is anecdotes such as this that add strength to Lin Carter's explorations). The meat of the chapter involves Carter tracing character names in Tolkien's LotR to their respective sources: mostly by "immersion in Welsh, Norse, Gaelic, Scandinavian and Germanic folklore" (the quote is from an article called "The Fantastic World of Professor Tolkien" by Michael Straight, originally published in The New Republic, January 16, 1956). Carter shows that often there is more then one source for each name. For instance, the name Gandalf was first found in the Edda's dwarf catalogue; however, a character named Gandalf also plays a part in the fourteenth century Norse saga Thattr Nornagest Saga; we see the name Gandalf also appearing in the William Morris' novel The Well at the World's End. From here, Carter leads into the final chapter of the book.

Chapter 15, Some People, Places and Things explores the setting of Tolkien's fantasy work. Carter begins with "Places" and establishes the history of a fantasy world in the the Morris-Dunsany-Eddison-Tolkien tradition. By this is meant that the idea of a fantasy world, as understood by the modern reader, began with William Morris, and was used (and perhaps built upon and or expanded) by Lord Dunsany, E.R. Eddison and then J.R.R. Tolkien in that order. He also gives another what I call a Lin Carter PR moment when in a foot note he expands upon the term Sword & Sorcery, in which he is speaking of the similarities between epic fantasy worlds and those of the common sword and sorcery world. Here he explains that Robert E. Howard is the father of the sword and sorcery genre, but it was later expanded upon by such authors as Henry Kuttner (with his Elak Stories), L. Sprague de Camp (who at the time Carter was writing this book shared a strong friendship with him), Fritz Lieber (who actually coined the term Sword & Sorcery) and oh-yeah, Lin Carter (for his Thongor stories). The "People" section of this chapter is the strongest. Here Carter points out the character tropes used for Tolkien's characters. He suggests that Aragon is the perfect Patrician Hero and that Frodo is perhaps in the words of William Shakespeare "one who has greatness thrust upon them". He ends the chapter with an interesting tracing of the origins of "...the White Tree which once bloomed in Minas Arnor in the great days of Gondor" and its relation to the tree mythology laid out in volume III of Teutonic Mythology by Viktor Rydberg.

Lin Carter ends the book with a post-script titled, After Tolkien, which is a laundry list of works that are influenced by Tolkien. For instance, Carol Kendall's Gammage Cup, published in 1959, tells a story of a hobbit like race of little people. He also compares Alan Garner's novels The Weirdstone of Brisingamen (1960), The Moon of Gomrath (1963) and Elidor (1965) all seem influenced by LotR. He ends with stating that the finest books to follow the Tolkien tradition to date are the works of Llyod Alexander; The Book of Three (1964), The Black Cauldron (1965), The Castle of Llyr (1966), Taran Wanderer (1967) and The High King (1968).

He includes two appendix, "A Checklist of Critical Literature on The Lord of the Rings" and "A Selected Bibliography". Both are outdated to the modern reader, but are not without merit.

I end this retrospective with Lin Carter's first sentence to the first paragraph of his "Postscript: After Tolkien"

If L. Sprague de Camp is correct in his opinion that Lord Dunsany was the most influential fantasy writer of the first half of this century, then I feel certain that J.R.R. Tolkien will prove the greatest influence over writers in the last half.

In my humble opinion, I would say Lin Carter was unarguably correct in his assumption. To deny the fingerprint left by J.R.R. Tolkien upon the Fantasy Genre, popular culture and Literature in general would be a hard argument to make.

Part three of this series will look at Lin Carter's magnum opus, Imaginary Worlds: The Art of Fantasy.

REVIEW: Starfarers of Catan - A hard to find treat

2012-02-25T16:09:00.012-09:00

I was introduced to Mayfair Games "Starfarers of Catan" several years ago. In fact, it was my introduction to the Catan universe of games (referring of course to the game "Settlers of Catan" and its many variants and expansion sets). It is a game I have played numerous times over the years, but until recently, I was deprived of the means to do so.

The reason being, Mayfair Games has stopped production for the game. This has happened at least once to every lover of games. A game loved by you is suddenly no longer available. This is the case with Starfarers. You can still score a copy, but it will cost you. On eBay, I've seen this game go for upwards of $200.

A gaming buddy of mine owned the copy I used to play with; however, he left the state and took his game with him. Due to the typical high cost of board games, I try not to buy duplicate copies of games that are all ready available to me in my circle of gaming friends. This is a good money saving strategy, but sometimes a cheapskate's actions can bite him in the butt. Currently, I am deciding if I should by the game "Arkham Horror" (which I recently reviewed here). "Arkham Horror" is a game I am head over heels in love with, and while I don't foresee my friend that owns it moving any time soon, I have been bit once. The cheapskate in me is balancing all of this out and will make a decision in the near future.

I decided about a month ago to buy a copy of Starfarers, as I was nostalgic for the game and wanted to play it again. I did not know at that time that Mayfair had stopped producing the game. A visit to my favourite local game shop and a conversation with its owner enlightened me to this fact. I started searching eBay and similar sites for a copy of my own. Until recently, I was unable to find a copy for a price that I was willing to spend.

I am happy to report that several weeks ago, I found a copy of the main game plus the 5-6 player expansion for $120. That is still about $50 over retail price, but I decided that it was price I was willing to pay to play. A couple of nights ago, two of my gaming buddies and myself decided to put "Arkham Horror" on the shelf for a night and play Starfarers. All three of us had played it before and knew we enjoyed it.

I am going to attempt to give an objective review of the game. That is not easy to do with a game that I love and have a long history with. I will try.

Game play is very similar to "Settlers of Catan" (and here I would like to point out that I am referring to Settlers with out any expansion sets). In a nut shell, "Starfarers of Catan" is a science fiction version of "Settlers of Catan". In both games, each player attempts to collect resources and spend said resources to build. Building is one of the main ways to receive victory points. A pre-set number of victory points are needed to win the game. Both games also rely upon trade being conducted amongst the players to achieve their goals. Both games are for 3 to 4 players (and both games offer expansion sets that allow this number to grow to 5 or 6) and both games take an average of three hours to play. So, at their core, both are the same.

The difference between Settlers and Starfarers is in the former, resources are collected based upon terrain that is settled by the player. Those resources are then used to build roads, more settlements and even cities (an improvement upon basic settlements that is worth more victory points). In Settlers, there is no combat or encounter system. Instead of relying upon combat as a point of tension, the players open trade amongst themselves and attempt to collect the resources they need while at the same time depriving their opponents of resources needed by them. A good amount of strategy is involved.

These observations are true of Starfares as well, with a minor change; in Starfarers the "land" settled is a colony on different worlds. Instead of roads being built, there is a movement system in place that allows a player to move either his colony ship or trade ship (or both) a set number of places. When an area that is eligible for colonisation is reached, it may be colonised by the player. There is still building in Starfares, but there is much more to build. Resources are used to build colony ships, trade ships, spaceports (the Starfarer version of improving a settlement to a city) and players can improve their ships. There are three improvements to be made for the space ships: boosters may be purchased (allowing faster interstellar travel), laser canons may be purchased (improving odds of dealing with space pirates) and freight rings are purchased (allowing increased trade amongst the alien races).

The largest difference between the two games is Starfarers adds the possibility of encounter cards to be drawn. There are generally three different encounter scenarios possible: space pirates can be encountered, which often leads to either combat or attempting to outrun them; the mysterious Travelers could be encountered, which often leads to players having the opportunity to make a space jump to any legal position on the board; or a ship in distress could be encountered, which most often leads to combat.

Coupled with this major change are the randomising factors. In "Settlers of Catan" 2d6 are used to determine resource production. The same is said of Starfarers and in both cases a result of 7 leads to a loss of production (in the case of Settlers the Robber Baron appears, in Starfarers a roll of 7 leads to Earth demanding tribute). Starfarers adds another randomising factor. The player's space ship has four round, coloured balls inside of it, with a clear plastic window at the bottom that allows two of the balls to be seen.

At the beginning of a player's movement phase, he shakes his ship, turns it right side up and looks at the two round balls that are now visible through the plastic bottom of the space ship.

The space ships, pictured to the left (in all its Pimped Out Ride Glory), are used for determining speed and combat success. Three of the round balls (red, blue and yellow) have a numerical value attached to them. A number from 1 to 3. When two of these balls are visible through the clear plastic window (more of a cup actually) are visible their numerical values are added together and give a base number for either speed or combat. For speed, the number of boosters built by the player are added to this number. For combat, the number of cannons built add to the value instead. In both cases, the player will be rolling against an opponent stated by the card (usually either the player to his left or right, and there are cases when the second player to his left or right is called upon).

The appearance of the black ball (numerically worth zero) signifies that an encounter will occur. Thus a whole new element is added to the game that Settlers misses (again, I'm only referring to the base Settlers of Catan Game).

With all of this being said, I wouldn't call Starfarers a superior game over Settlers. Starfarers is cool in a sleek geeky way. The space ships are very old-school Flash Gorden in appearance, and this appeals to my inner sci-fi nerd.

Starfarers does have draw backs. The biggest, in my opinion, is the appearance of the Travellers offers a huge advantage to whatever player is lucky enough to encounter them; especially if this happens early in the game. That player will have access to the furthest portions of the game board and it will take the other players often, too many rounds to catch up. The second complaint I have is while the encounter cards add a really cool element to the game, they happen too often. As I stated previously, there are 5 coloured balls in the space ship, two of which that will be read. So there is always a 2 in 5 chance of having an encounter, that is almost half of the time.

A common complaint of the game is the boosters when attached to the space ship often break the clips that are designed for its use. When the game was still around, Mayfair Games was happy to send replacement clips that are slipped over the original clips. With these in place, it was possible to attach the boosters to the ships without breaking them. With the set I used to play with, we did not have these clips available, so we always set the boosters in front of the ship instead of attaching them. I am fortunate enough that the used copy I purchased has the improved clips included. I do not know if Mayfair will still provide the new clips as replacements or not. When the game was still in print, they would do so for free.

Another con, while it is playable with three people, having played with both three and four, I can tell you it is better with four people. I have also played with as many as six players, and I can also state that more then four players bogs game play down and there is lots of time sitting and waiting for your turn.

The biggest disadvantage is a sad one: the game is no longer available. If you want to play this game, I wish you the best of luck and may the Travellers bless you.

Groo VS Conan (This time for Reals)

2012-02-22T21:04:00.002-09:00

It began as an April Fools joke. I fell for it. I must say, I am far more excited about this then Marvel's upcoming crossover Avengers vs X-Men, or as they are advertising it, A vs X.

Dark Horse Comics,"Queen of the Black Coast"

2012-02-22T18:44:00.010-09:00

I am a fan of all things Robert E. Howard, particularly Conan. I do not disdain pastiche, but I avoid bad pastiche. For that reason, when I want good Conan pastiche, I prefer it served in comic books.

Over the many years of my reading Conan comics and comics in general, I have read some great stuff and some not so great stuff. For me the Golden Era of Conan comics is with no doubt the black and white pages of Marvel comics The Savage Sword of Conan.

However, I have been reading the Dark Horse Conan, and all of their adaption of Robert E. Howard's creations since they began publishing them. Over all, they have done an admirable job. I have had mixed reactions to some of their stories and art choices, but it is good enough, I keep coming back for more.
Of particular interest to me is for months now, DH has been teasing their fans of an upcoming adaption of "Queen of the Black Coast". While I enjoy a well done Howard creation pastiche, I always welcome a new adaption of a Howard classic.

Having just read issue one of Conan the Barbarian, I can say that this will be an interesting adaption; however, I think some fans will hate it for the reason that I am digging it. Let me explain.

Artistic representations of Conan have changed very little over the years. This is due to the art of Frank Frazetta and John Buscema. Both did such an excellent job of capturing the visual imagination of Conan and comics fans, that their depictions of Conan stand over all other new comers. In other words, all depictions of Conan will be weighed against theirs. This is despite that fact that for thirty years Conan was not drawn to look any thing like Frazetta or Buscema's renderings (to see what I'm talking about, click here).

This adaption of Queen of the Black Coast will be illustrated by Becky Cloonan. I am not familiar with her previous work, but I am such a fan of the inherent sexiness that she is installed in her renderings of Belit thus far, that I will be seeking out her past and future work. To see what I mean, check out these interior pages from issue one.

Cloonan has not only made Belit sexy, she has also made her a bit scary. There is an under current of the forbidden or taboo in her drawing of her.

Frankly, this Belit appeals to me.

As I stated earlier though, some will not like her art, and it is specifically her interpretation of Conan that they will not like. Here is another interior image, this time of Conan.

Cloonan's Conan does not fit the mold made by Frazetta and Buscema. Her Conan is not a mountain of muscle. That will be the biggest complaint. At first I looked at her Conan and thought, this is not Conan; however, I am a big enough fan of her Belit, that I am willing to try to accept this rendering of Conan.

I think she has captured his youth well. This adventure takes place when Conan is still in his 20's. He is reckless, but has enough experience that when he boasts, he is not simply crowing, so to speak. Cloonan is concentrating on his roguishness and not his brawn. It is not an approach that most Conan artists would take, but I think it may be refreshing.

I am looking forward to issue 2, as it should more prominently feature Belit.

Conan? Not so Much.

2012-02-22T17:50:00.003-09:00

As I stated in a previous post, I spent much of my summer reading on all things Conan and Robert E. Howard in anticipation of the movie Conan The Barbarian (2011). While the new movie was largely a disappointment for me, re-reading, and in many cases reading for the first time, Howard's works was time well spent. I also sought out new "Conan" experiences. I watched, or attempted to watch both the 1997- 1998 TV series Conan the Adventurer and the 1992-1994 cartoon of the same name.

From the get-go, it was obvious to me that the live-action show, Conan the Adventurer, was going to be poor pastiche at best. I remember catching a few episodes when the show was originally airing, and thinking, "what is this happy horse-shit?" Meaning, anyone watching this show expecting Robert E. Howard's Conan, will be disappointed.

The Conan of the show is played by Ralf Moller. The Conan he portrays is kind, jovial and honorable. While REH's Conan could be those things, he was more of a loner and could be very unkind when the situation warranted. In the show Conan travels with a band of Adventurers to include Otli, a clever dwarf often used as comedic interlude, played by Danny Woodburn; Bayu, a martial-artist that must overcome his natural tendency towards greed and is often the brunt of Otli's jokes, played by T.J. Storm; and Zzeben, a mute, staff wielding, acrobatic warrior, played by Robert McRay. Many episodes often include the character Karalle The Queen of Thieves, who is a cross between Belit of "Queen of the Black Coast" fame and the character Valeria of the 1982 film Conan the Barbarian staring Arnold Schwarzenegger. Karalle is played by Aly Dunne.

In the show, Conan and crew face legions of bad guys that work for the evil sorcerer Hissah Zuhl (played by Jeremy Kemp). Hissah Zuhl enslaved Cimmeria and killed not only Conan's parents, but also the love of Conan's life (a girl that Conan met and fell in love with in a span of five days). I found it laughable that Hissah Zuhls minions were so easily beaten. They could have easily been replaced with cylons from the original Battlestar Galactica.

All in all, I couldn't stomach this awful Conan pastiche. I found the cartoon of the same name slightly better then the live-action Conan the Adventurer.

In the cartoon, Conan has a shield with a design of a phoenix upon it that comes to life via magic as a fledgling named Needle.This almost sounds cool, but Needle (irritatingly voiced by Michael Beattle) is the Jar-jar Binks of the Hyborean universe.

In the cartoon, Conan is voiced by Michael Donovan. In my opinion, Donovan tries way too damn hard to sound like a tough guy. He over does the machismo of his voice. Instead of machismo, he obtain cheese-mo. I will stop with the negatives of the show. The truth is, I suffered through four episodes and couldn't take it any more.

However, there were a few things I liked. The main bad guys of the show were serpent people. These are torn right from the pages of Howard's Kull stories, but have more in common with the same serpent people portrayed in Marvel Comics Kull books back in the day.

I may not have given the show that much of a chance, but I did find one episode I particularly enjoyed, "Hanuman the Ape God". It is worth mentioning that the Ape God of this episode is named after the Hindu Ape-God of the same name. In this episode, Conan and clan encounter an alien that is apish in appearance. The alien, Hanuman, is being held captive by the wicked ruler of a city that Conan comes upon. Conan ends up freeing him and returning his magic rod to him that allows Hanuman to return to his people. I really dug the science fiction angel of this episode, and appreciated how it reminded me of Robert E. Howard's Conan tale, "The Tower of the Elephant".

Unfortunately, despite how much I enjoyed the episode "Hanuman the Ape God", the show over all failed to resonate with my barbaric soul.

REVIEW: Arkham Horror - A Cooperative Board Game

2012-02-22T12:13:00.011-09:00

My group's recent nerdgasm has been delivered via Fantasy Flight's Arkham Horror board game. As with all Fantasy Flight games, it is a work of art. The box is heavy duty, the game pieces are built to last, the art work is top-notch and the flavor text associated with the game is prime.

It is a game designed for one to eight players, with four being optimal, in my best-guess opinion; however, we have been playing with three and have found it challenging, but not unmanageable; as a matter-of-fact, we have won both games we've played. I do feel that a fourth player would be better for game balance, but more then four, again my opinion only, may get cumbersome. I am curious to pick up my own copy and give solo play a try, but suspect the success rate of solo play would be about on par with my success rate with most Tunnels and Trolls solo adventures, in other words, non-existent.

The basic gist of the game is this: players take the role of an Investigator. This investigator can be assigned randomly, or selected. We normally select the investigator of our choice. Game play is broken into several turns which are played until either a victory condition is met, or the Ancient One awakes, which often leads to defeat. The Ancient One is either selected randomly at game set-up or chosen. Again, we choose our Ancient One. If the players are defeated, the Ancient One in play devours/destroys the city of Arkham.

Each turn is broken into five phases:

1. Upkeep, in which the players refresh abilities of their investigators

2. Movement, self explanatory, players move their investigators about the game board.

3. Arkham Encounters, in this stage any investigators in the city might have an encounter. Encounters can be combat in nature with monsters, or skill checks that may lead to a terrible fate or possible bonus.

4. Other World Encounters, this stage is run much the same as the Arkham Encounters phase, but takes place in the other worlds that open via gates.

5. Mythos. In this stage, a mythos card is drawn and its effects are put into play. This often includes the opening of another gate, which spawns monsters and brings the Ancient One that much closer to awakening. There are several other effects as well, too numerous to go into for the purpose of a quick and dirty review.

We have now played through it twice, and are eager for a third helping. When deciding upon a new game for my group and myself, one of my chief concerns of the game in question is, "is there replay value"? In the case of Arkham Horror, I whole heartedly say yes there is. In the base game alone, there are several choices of investigators to select from, each one has strengths and weakness that make each game a new experience. Also, there are several options of Ancient Ones as well, and each Ancient One brings its own changes to each game. Of course Fantasy Flight also has available several expansions that add new elements to the base game itself, such as more investigators, Ancient Ones and optional rules. All-in-all, Arkham Horror is well supported by Fantasy Flight and it appears that they intend to do so for some time. Support, especially if it appears long term, is another factor I look for in a game prior to investing, as to be honest, the average, quality board game will run a geek anywhere from $15 to nearly $100. That's a lot of rupees.

What impresses me most with the game is the cooperative way in which it is played. For those that do not know, a cooperative game means that the players, in this case one to eight, cooperate together to beat the game. There is a definite "us versus them" mentality.

Strangely, we had difficulties with cooperative play at first. It seems odd that we would as in the past, we have played lots of roleplaying games, which are cooperative by nature, even if that cooperative nature is only amongst the players versus the game master.

I suspect that difficulties with cooperative play in our group stem from our long history of playing board games together. One of our "go-to" games is Zombies! If you have never played then take my word for it, it is a very cut-throat, non-cooperative game. My group and I have developed a mentality of "if I can't win, then I will screw over as many of you bozos as I can"!

This attitude will not work in a cooperative game; especially not with Arkham Horror. As I stated, we have played twice and we have beaten the game both times. From reviews that I've read, our 100% success rate is unusual. Most players find a success rate of closer to 20% on average when playing Arkham Horror. We have done a careful review of the rules to make sure we aren't cheating, and our conclusion is that while we've made some minor mistakes, mostly during our first outing, we have not been bending the rules nor breaking any that would lead to our sound victory record. It appears, we are either just that damn good, or very lucky our first two outings out.

The negatives of the game are hard to find. The chief complaint I believe would have to be long game play. Our first game took an excess of five hours; however, our second game was finished in just under four hours. I would state that average game play is in the four hour range. Another concern is a long set up time. It has taken us about 15 minutes both times to set up the play area and this is common with many of Fantasy Flight's games due to all the chits and pieces involved.

The only other complaint, and I wouldn't even call it a complaint -- more like an observation, is that the Mythos of the game is derived from the Cthulhu Mythos developed by August Derleth and not H.P. Lovecraft. As I said though, this is not a complaint, merely an observation. I am solidly in the S.T. Joshi camp of Lovecraft fans and am not a supporter of the mythos as Derleth developed it, but I can put that aside for a chance to play a great game.

Arkham Horror is a great game.

Still Alive

2012-02-14T16:12:00.001-09:00

I've had a long absence due to life from the blogosphere, but, I'm still here and alive. More to come, later versus sooner.

Review: Citadels - A card game by Bruno Faidutti

2012-01-14T17:17:00.002-09:00

I picked up Fantasy Flight's Bruno Faidutti's Citadels on a whim. It was a good choice.

I am not familiar with Mr. Faidutti's previous games, amongst his previous credits are Knightmare Chess, Mystery of the Abbey and Diamant; however, I admit to being a Fantasy Flight Game Boy-Whore, so the fact that this little gem was made by Fantasy Flight Games was good enough for me.

The premises is simple: two to seven players control various characters and attempt to build a city.

The basic game has eight numbered characters, one through eight. The Characters are, number: 1. the Assassin, 2. the Thief, 3. the Magician, 4. the King, 5. the Bishop, 6. the Merchant, 7. the Architect and 8. the Warlord. Each character has a different power. Part of the strategy of the game is deciding which character's power would be most beneficial to you this round and at the same time, determining which character your opponents will most likely select to use against you and/or your other opponents.

I have played this game now on two seperate occasions and both times have had three players, so I will be reviewing the three player style. There are different rules for two players, and four to six players and eight players. There is also an option for seven players. The game is optimal with four, five, six and eight players.

The object is to build a city consisting normally of eight districts, but it could be as few as seven, depending upon which cards are in play. Districts are purchased with gold coins, some cost more others cost less. Those costing more, are worth more points towards winning. There are various "purple" districts which often give their possessors various powers that can be used to score more points against her opponents. The game consists of "turns" and continues until the first player has built enough districts to constitute a city; after-which, points are added to determine a winner.

At game set up, each player is given two gold coins and is dealt four district cards, then the eldest player (a common Fantasy Flight Games rule) starts as the "Crown" player and she possesses a wooden yellow crown piece -- later the Crown player will be selected by who ever chooses the King character, if anyone does at all. The Crown player first randomly selects one character of the eight (she should do this with the cards face down so even she does not know which character is selected), this character is placed face down, and will not be an option for anyone that turn. After doing this, she then secretly selects a character for herself. After selecting her first character, the crown player now passes the remaining six cards to the player to her left. That player secretly selects her first character, then passes the remaining five to the third player. This continues until the last two cards are handed off to the third player. At that point, she has last picks for her second character, and then places the character she didn't pick face down on the table, this character also will not be an option for anyone that turn.

Game set-up now complete, the crown player calls out each character by number; thus the Assassin goes first, if in play. If the Assassin is not in-play, the crown player goes to the next character, the Thief. This continues until a character is found that is in play. Each character's turn is taken in order of lowest number to highest number. When it is a players turn, that player first has the option of either selecting two cards from the top of the discard deck. She may look at both cards, decide which one of the two she wants for her hand, keeps that card and places the other at the bottom of the deck. If this option is not wanted, she may instead receive two gold coins from the bank. Early in the game, most players will choose gold over districts; however, after two or three hands, district cards become short in order. After doing this, she then may build a district from her hand, if she wishes and if she has enough gold to do so. At any time during her turn, she may opt to use her character's power. As an example, the Assassin may select any character she wishes to be assassinated. Whoever possess the chosen target character, if anyone at all, looses her turn when that character is activated.

That is the game in a nut-shell. We found it simple to learn with just enough strategy to keep in interesting. Both times we played, in a two hour period we played three games each night, so each game takes approximately thirty to forty-five minutes to play.

The set I purchased also comes with the Dark City Expansion included. The expansion offers ten new characters, two of which -- characters numbered "9"-- are only usable with seven players. The expansion also offers a number of new "purple" districts.

In short, Citadels is a fast learning strategy game with much replay value. I highly recommend it.

Long Break, but I'm back

2012-01-13T17:07:00.003-09:00

Not only have I not been blogging, I have even slipped from reading blogs. It's odd how a few days break turns into months.

Now I hear rumblings of a D&D 5 that is a possible return to old-school. Very interesting. I am in anticipation of what WotC will bring out this time.

In the mean time, I am slowly getting back to this blog, but first I need to catch up on the blogosphere and I look forward to doing so.

I am happy to say that I am gaming again. I've been doing numerous board games (Mrs. Santa was very generous this year); and as of yesterday, I have joined a Legends game (Runequest II). I have never played Runequest before, so this will be entertaining for me.

wow

2011-12-12T22:26:00.000-09:00

I'm drunk. out.

Happy Thanksgiving

2011-11-23T14:56:00.001-09:00

I've been too busy to post much lately with the approaching Holiday, work and some unfortunate family stuff, but I do wish a Happy Thanksgiving to all.

Confession of a Closet Gamer

2011-11-03T16:41:00.004-08:00

I am a closet gamer. I'm ashamed to admit it, but I am. My professional career would consist of me being teased and tormented, if I were to admit openly that I like to get together with friends, make up some non-existent personae, roll-some dice, eat some snacks and have a few brews.

It's odd and sad when it is put into perspective. After all, I also like to get together with friends and watch football or hockey. In both cases, snacks and beer are involved. It is the non-existent personae and dice rolling that hangs people up.

I'm just curious, are there other closet gamers out there, like myself, that must keep one of their cherished past times a secret to avoid ridicule?

Playing on-line, Testing the Waters

2011-11-03T16:28:00.002-08:00

Not that I have a large following, but I am looking to scratch my gaming itch. Face-to-face is no longer possible, so I am looking at doing something on-line. I'm thinking of using Google+hangout.

If anyone is interested, let me know, or if you have suggestions, please chime in. I would also love to hear from anyone that regularly, or at least has experience with, playing in an on-line fashion, as I am a newb.

The only experience I have had is as a player in a play-by-post Tunnels and Trolls game that, sadly, seems to be dead.

My Own Sword and Sorcery Game: Part 4, Re-thinking, Re-tooling

2011-11-01T11:28:00.003-08:00

First off, I'm embarrassed to point out that some how I got my acronym for my game wrong. I was Hell bent on calling it SAGA, for Sword and Sorcery Game Algorithm. DUH. That acronym would be SASGA. Say it with me now, "SAS-GA". Not too much of ring to it is there? So for now, I'm going with MOSS-G (My Own Sword and Sorcery Game), but I'm considering simply My S&S Game. It's not very catching, but I don't care. This isn't something I'm selling, it's just for me. Maybe, if I can do so legally, I'd give it away for free, but I have no plans of making sales.

I'm also rethinking classes. Initially, I did not want to have a spell-caster class, but now I am weebling on that issue. I'm trying to keep a strict Sword & Sorcery flavor to the game, but there really is no reason why I can't allow players to be spell-casters and maintain the S&S feel for the game that I want; however, I don't believe magic as presented in standard D&D would work.

In order for magic to work, it must be dangerous with dire consequences for failure. The trade off for that must be that IF it does work, then the results should be just as spectacular as those of failure. I need to develop a system in which it is usable, but is a last resort. Players should shudder every time they roll the dice.

I'm still firm on no Clerics. The priest as it is represented in D&D is not in my vision.

Random Encounter #2: Village of the Damned

2011-10-31T19:57:00.008-08:00

It has been a slow Halloween for me; unfortunately, I came down with Fluzilla last week and I am still in the midst of fighting it.

Normally on Halloween, I go trick-or-treating with a family friend, his two daughters and mine own daughter; however, this year my daughter decided she is too old to need her Daddy with her, and feeling under the weather, I didn't put up too much of a fight.

I do select a scary movie for Halloween weekend viewing. I try my best to make it a movie I have never seen. This year was no exception. I selected the 1960 science fiction film "Village of the Damned" by Wolf Rilla.

It is a faithful adaption, or so I read on Wikipedia, of a The Midwich Cuckoos by John Wyndham. Cuckoos was published in 1957 and has been adapted to screen twice as The Village of the Damned, once in 1960 and again in 1995. I have never viewed the 1995 adaption, odd for me as it was directed by John Carpenter, one of my personal favorite directors. It is worth noting that the 1995 version stars Christopher Reeve in his last performance before becoming paralyzed.

The 1960 version is a creepy film. I was expecting some "cheeze", but there was none to be had. The film is dark in tone. It begins with a mystery and the sense of mystery continues until the shocking end. It is an invasion story in which society is subverted by the alien children. The horror creeps in as it becomes apparent that one of societies cherished treasures, her children, are the "other".

I'm attracted to films of this era that exploit the sense of "the other". With the Cold War raging, and only a bit over a decade past the dropping of the atomic bomb on Japan, there were a slew of science fiction films, stories and novels from the era that exploited the fear.

I've decided to add a new element to the few reviews I actually do for this blog. That element is a Random Encounter that can easily be slid into a fantasy campaign. In this case, I offer one inspired by the film.

Random Encounter #2: Village of the Damned
While traveling the characters come upon a tiny village. An old faded sign bears the wood burned word "Midwich" branding it thus. They come upon the village in the middle of the day. Just past the sign, there is a farmer's cart, the horse is asleep as is the farmer and what may be his younger son or farm hand. Both are slumped in the cart.

Investigation finds the same scene through out the village. It is obvious that the villagers are only sleeping, but nothing will arouse them. It is easy enough to rob the village, for those so inclined, but it is a poor village and not much is found worth stealing.

What caused the villagers slumber? A powerful sleep spell? A cursed item (perhaps now in possession of thieving characters)? Perhaps the village borders too close to the Fae, and they are involved. Could it be a Goblin plot? If so, what do the goblins gain by putting an entire village to sleep?

The villagers could wake up while the characters are there, or they may have to find a way to awaken them. This could be a straight forward adaption of the film to game, in which case the DM will have to devise a reason for the characters to stick around for the birth of the alien children. It would be easy enough to devise a reason for them to return two years later, when the children are born and well advanced beyond their years.

Instead of a straightforward adaption, the children could be part Fae, or goblin, further inspiration on Fae children that appear human could be found in the novel The Broken Sword, by Poul Anderson.

My Own Sword and Sorcery Game: Part 3, Attributes

2011-10-21T23:11:00.008-08:00

I will begin this post with the obligatory statement of I declare these items as part of the OGL.

I'm going to start the "crunchy" bits with player character and non-player character attributes, those attributes that every person in the game world would have.

In doing so, I've decided to use the Fudge engine as my basis, with a heavy influence from the world's most popular fantasy game, with a few items mixed in from other games that I like.

First a quick explanation of Fudge mechanics, for those that do not know. Attributes are left up to the game master in Fudge. There are no set attributes. Three broad catagories are given (Body, Mind and Soul), but it is up to the Game Master and players to decide as to what, if any attributes are to be used.

After each attribute is selected, an adjective is assigned to each ranging from Terrible to Superb, with Fair being the average. In "basic" Fudge, four six sided dice are rolled. Traditional Fudge dice have two blank faces that equal zero, two + faces that increase the result by 1 and two - faces that decrease results by one. Most skill rolls require a "Fair" or better result to succeed. So if a skill roll is needed at a "Fair" result for success and that skill is based upon an attribute that is set at "Fair", then four Fudge dice are rolled. If the results were +, -, blank, blank, then the + and - would cancel each other out, and the two "blank" results would have no impact. Since the skill started at Fair, it remains at Fair and succeeds.

I've never been a fan of the "adjective" method, so I prefer to assign numbers to the attributes. I also prefer random attribute generation. So in order to obtain both results, I will have the players roll 3d6 for each attribute. The number obtained will result in a modifier of -3 to +3. These modifiers, with the average being "0" will be added to skill rolls. The modifiers will be thus:

3 = -3
4-5 = -2
6-8 = -1
9-12 = 0
13-15 = +1
16-17 = +2
18 = +3

I will work out later, exactly how these results will factor into skill rolls.

For my attributes I've selected:

Strength: deals with all skills that are physical strength based such as attacking with a weapon and opening a jambed door. Also acts as a modifier to the amount of damage dealt.

Dexterity: deals with all skills that are based upon manual dexterity, such as dodging a blow and jumping from roof top to roof top. Also acts as a modifier to the character's Armor Class.

Constitution: deals with all skills related to health such as determining the effects of drinking poison, or determining how long a character can run with out stopping. This is also a character's "hit-point" score and is modified through character advancement and can go above the level of "18".

Intelligence: deals with all skills related to mental ability. For spell-casters, this directly effects their ability to channel magic.

Melee: Used to determine the effectiveness of a direct melee attack upon an opponent. Along with Constitution, this is an attribute that can increase with character advancement and can go above the level of "18".

Ballistics: Used to determine the effectiveness of ranged attacks upon an opponent. Along with Constitution and Melee, this is an attribute that can increase with character advancement and can go above the level of "18".

Luck: A catch all attribute used to determine various "Saving Rolls" when another attribute is not applicable. It's modifier, if positive, may be added to any roll of the player's choice up to the maximum modifier level per session. In other words, a Luck attribute score of 16 grants a total modifier of +2. That +2 could either be added to a single roll, or two separate rolls at +1 each, per session. A character's Luck score modifier also acts as the character's "Fate Points". Fate points can be cashed in to keep a character alive beyond the point when he would normally be dead. Each use of a "Fate" point is permanent and results in a permanent drain on the over all Luck Attribute Score of -1. Luck can be modified with character advancement.

My Own Sword and Sorcery Game: Part 2, Influences

2011-10-21T09:55:00.003-08:00

I'm still in the note-taking process of mashing together my own role playing game, but it is fun just thinking about it.

Step one of this process is declaring "what" my game is going to be about. In three words: Sword and Sorcery.

The definition of Sword and Sorcery I prefer is by Philip Martin in his work The Writer's Guide to Fantasy Literature: From Dragon's Lair to Hero's Quest.

"Sword and Sorcery [is characterized]...by a strong bias towards fast-paced, action rich tales set within a quasi-mythical or fantastical framework. Unlike high or epic fantasy, the stakes tend to be personal, the danger confined to the moment of telling" (Martin 35).

I also like Karl Edward Wagner's definition: "[Sword and Sorcery is]...a fascinating synthesis of horror, adventure and imagination...displayed to best effect in a universe in-which magic works and an individual may kill according to his personal code". I like KEW's definition for it puts "horror" first. This is important for I feel that the proper father of Sword and Sorcery is Robert E. Howard.

The roots of Sword and Sorcery, just as those of Epic/High Fantasy, stem from the great epics (Gilgamesh, Beowulf, etc.) and the much later Lord Dunsany story, "The Fortress Unvanquishable Save for Sacnoth"; however, it was Howard's 1929 Kull story, "The Shadow Kingdom" which solidified what Sword and Sorcery would become, even if the phrase Sword and Sorcery would not be coined until 30 years later by Fritz Leiber. Howard, of course, was heavily influenced by his contemporary, H.P. Lovecraft, and horror, and/or a sense of dread, was often a large factor in the Sword and Sorcery writings of Howard, and those of Clark Ashton Smith.

Thus I've begun my project by deciding upon my own early Appendix N. I'm sure the list will change as I go along.

Another early decision I'm trying to arrive at is a good working title. The best I've come up with so far is: Sword and Sorcery Game Algorithm, or SAGA. It is a mouth full, and the use of the word "Algorithm" is forced as an synonym for "System", but works as an acronym in the spirit of Fudge and GURPS, and it serves as a tribute to both the North sagas and the 1960's Swordsmen and Sorcerer's Guild of America, whose membership included Lin Carter, Fritz Leiber and Jack Vance, just to name three.

My second option is MOSS-Game, My Own Sword and Sorcery-Game.

Advice, votes and suggestions are welcome.

My Own Sword and Sorcery Game

2011-10-19T19:33:00.000-08:00

In a recent post, I spoke of my wish to design my own version of D&D; however, not for general consumption, but only for my own use. I now realize that what I really want is my own Sword and Sorcery game.

I make this distinction because while a quick look at the Appendix N (from the AD&D Dungeon Master's Guide) will show that D&D is strongly rooted in the traditional roots of Sword and Sorcery (i.e. Robert E. Howard, Fritz Lieber), it also tries to be rooted in the genre of High Fantasy (J.R.R Tolkien being the most obvious example listed in Appendix N). In fact, I believe this is D&D's greatest appeal; however, it is also it's greatest limitation.

While it is cool that players can "make their own game" by simply omitting aspects of the game they do not wish to include; I suspect that the willingness to do so is more apt to be found amongst those that enjoy the OSR. Furthermore, I believe, and this is merely opinion, I believe that with the publication of AD&D, TSR began moving its fan base away from the idea of "it's your game, do what you want", and more towards, "this is the official way you should play". This is, as I said opinion only, but consider the old house organ magazine of Dragon back in the day and the regular feature "Sage Advice" in which any questions of "what's the official rule here?" were answered. I don't mean to be repetitive, but there was a definite drive towards making things "official".

It is damn hard to be "official" and all encompassing with a game like D&D, for it involves the tropes of Sword and Sorcery, High Fantasy and at times even a splash of Historical Fantasy and Sword and Planet. I believe as the game progressed towards the late 80's there was a drive to be more High Fantasy then anything else.

All of this is fine, but it's not the game I want. So fine, I'm a firm believer in the OSR (even if I don't solidly play in the OSR sandbox), so I am free to do what I want. Don't like the Cleric class? Nix it. Don't want Players running magic-users? Don't let them. Don't want hordes of cannon fodder monsters running around? Fine, then throw out the Monster Manual and make your own creepy-crawlers. All of those decisions are easy.

It is even easy enough to make crunchy rules decisions. Don't like alignment? Don't use it. Think Wisdom is a silly attribute? Don't use it. etc. etc. etc..

It comes to a point though when you have to ask yourself: am I still playing D&D? It's okay if the answer is no. My answer is No. I find it liberating. I am now free to do whatever I want.

In another recent post, I listed my ten favorite rpg products.
Now that I am free to do whatever I want, why not combine all of the elements I like from those products and make my own game? The first non game changing rule I would make is my game will be grounded in Sword and Sorcery, minus all the high fantasy. It will be markedly low fantasy. I'm simply going to mash together everything I like and make it work.

This will be fun. Now if I only actually had time to game. *Sigh*

My Own Dungeons & Dragons

2011-10-16T00:29:00.000-08:00

Gaming is keeping me awake tonight. Not the actual playing of a game; unfortunately, but the wishing that I were and more to the point, the idea of what my personal D&D game would be like.

One thing I appreciate about the OSR and the OGL is the opportunity that both grant fans to design and use their very own personal "perfect" version of the world's most popular role playing game.

I'm not planning on pushing forward yet another clone. There is nothing wrong with the substantial number of clones out there that are available to fans; however, I don't feel the need to offer up what would be my personal "perfect" game.

The "what" that game would be is keeping me awake. First, I would pair down the races to one: human. I think having so many, and in some case too many race options eliminates the weirdness of the alien or the other.

Second, I would restrict the classes available to Fighter and Thief. Magic-user would be a class reserved for NPC's, most often the villains. This would give it more of a traditional sword & sorcery flavor. Magic would be less common, and when encountered, it would most often be feared. Magic items would always be suspect.

Clerics have just never jived with me as a class. I'm not down playing the importance of religion in the game, but too often clerics are just a convenient traveling medic/turner of undead. Some clerical magic I would keep, but I would convert it as magic-user spells.

Having only two class options, I would adapt the concept of Character Kits from 2nd edition AD&D. I would use a simple skill system that allows each character to be different.

Third, I would not have a monster manual. Monsters would not be as common as they are in the typical D&D game and when they were encountered, they would be truly monstrous. I would not have too many repeat appearances of monsters. I would strive to make each monster unique. Alien. Other.

I have many more specific rules changes, but those are for another time. Now, I'm off to sleep.

John Carter Trailer 2012 -- Official Movie Trailer | HD

2011-10-14T22:01:00.000-08:00

I am probably the 100,000,000th person to share this, but I am stoked about this movie. Here is hoping that this does for Burroughs, what the latest Conan movie did not do for Howard.

Random Encounter #1: The Door to Hell

2011-10-13T18:26:00.000-08:00

With this post I am attempting to make this blog live up to its namesake of Random Encounters. With this series of posts, I will present persons/places/things that can randomly be inserted into games. This, being the first, I've decided to go with an encounter inspired by a natural phenomenon from the "real" world that has always intrigued me: The Door to Hell located in Turkmenistan.

The Door to Hell in Turkmenistan was created three decades ago initially by a mining accident that released dangerous gases. Thinking that those gases would burn off in a matter of days, fire was set to them. It has been burning for 35 years.

It would be interesting if as part of the back-story of the crater, it too had been burning for a similar number of years. With this in mind, the players could seek out old-timers that were there when it started burning. The genesis of the flame could be mundane or mysterious as the Dungeon Master sees fit.

The Door to Hell is a location based encounter. It is easily placed randomly, or as a planned location in a desert environment.

It is possible, and may be more effective, if the characters have heard rumors of it.

As the picture shows, it is a gaping maw of fire. It began burning years ago. There are various reasons: perhaps a craft of alien origins wrecked and ignited it, or it may have been caused by a magical mishap, it could be a direct opening to the elemental plane of fire, or, as its namesake suggests, it could very well be the Door to Hell.

Adventure Seeds:
The ideas below are just adventure seeds, the doorway could be used as local color as well.

As a low-level encounter, it is doubtful that the characters would have the means to directly enter the doorway, so adventures at this level would have it as background noise; however, having knowledge of its location, the characters could return when they have means sufficient to explore it further.

The characters could come across it and find a cult of desert dwelling clerics that firmly believe the crater to be either a door to Hell or a portal to the elemental plane of fire. The cultist could be right.

This cult has kidnapped some victims from a nearby oasis, and plans on sacrificing them by tossing them into the pit. Thus, this could be a simple "rescue the prisoners" encounter; however, what happens if the players are not successful in their rescue? Perhaps there is a an astronomical convergence and if the cultists are successful, then something "bad" will be released. The "bad" could be an elemental that is not happy about being on the prime material plane, or it could be a demon or devil that the players are not powerful enough to deal with. The being may or may not be controlled by the cultists.

As a mid-level adventure, the characters could have been sent by a higher level magic-user that wants something from the door that will enable him to make a powerful item.

The item could be a ruby that is deep within the crater that would be valuable for making the elemental item the mage has in mind.

The players could be granted temporary or, items with limited charges, or expendable items - such as potions- that will allow them to enter the doorway. Of course, there are bound to be denizens, elemental or nefarious in nature, that call the Doorway home.

Perhaps the doorway is nothing more than a mundane crater that continually flames from the gases that have been put to torch. It may still have attracted creatures from the elemental plane of fire that now claim it as home. It may have been set fire for a reason. Perhaps it is a doorway that leads to a "Lost World" in the spirit of Edgar Rice Burroughs Pellucidar. An advanced elder race calls this Hollow Earth home and set the crater to flame three decades ago when their Utopian realm was threatened with discovery by a band of adventurers. They are not happy to be "re-discovered". While their realm is Utopian for them, it is not for the race of primitive humans (or elves, or dwarves, or halflings) that they keep enslaved.

As a higher level adventure, it could be much the same as the mid-level adventure, but now the characters may all ready have magics of their own that allow them to enter the doorway.

It could be a level of a mega-elemental dungeon. There are other levels dedicated to each element and there are sub-levels dedicated to various lesser elements. As a level of a mega-dungeon, it could be a door way to the first of the Nine-Hells that just happens to connect directly with the Prime Material Plane. It may also be a smaller dungeon as the lair of an ancient Red Dragon that is as much Elemental as it is dragon. It may also be the home of an exiled Demi-God of Fire. The demi-god might also be a member of an elder race from beyond the stars that crashed here three decades ago and is yearning to return home.

Ten Favourite RPG Products

2011-10-11T17:53:00.000-08:00

If I had time to game, I would be using one of these, my all time favorite RPG products. Some are games, some are supplements:

10. Star Trek: The Next Generation Role Playing Game

Known as LUGTrek by those who played it (LUG short for Last Unicorn Games), this was a simple set of rules with a character creation system that I loved. A series of templates were used and were over laid upon the basic character to create the hero wanted for the game.

The system wasn't perfect. Somethings were glitchy; for instance starship battles were long and drawn out and just about anything was solvable with a creative use of skills and technobabble. However, I ran a year long campaign with this that everyone had a blast with.

I don't think I would ever run it again, although I have considered it, but when I did play this game, I had a blast.

9. GURPS Fantasy Folk (3rd edition rules)

This is a great book stuffed full of lots of cool factoids and adventure seeds. I owned many GURPS supplements, but this is the only one that I used as much as the main GURPS rulebook. My D&D races were and are heavily influenced by this book. I can't recommend it enough just as a source of good ideas.

8. Tunnels & Trolls (5th edition)

Tunnels & Trolls 5th edition is a game I love, but every time I try to get people to play it, there is always that "one guy" that sneers and bitches so much that it isn't worth the effort. Consequently, every time I am lucky enough to join in as a player in T&T, it never lasts.

Simply, I love this game. I choose 5th edition, for it is the edition I own. It is easy to learn, plays fast and the only solid rule is use common sense. It is the ultimate old-school game, in my not-so-humble-opinion.

7. GURPS (3rd edition)

I've played lots of roleplaying games in my day, and a lot of those games were played with the third edition of Steve Jackson's GURPS. I went through a phase in the late 80's and early 90's where I wouldn't play anything unless I could run it with GURPS. I was, in fact, a GURPS Snob.

I had lots of the world books and supplements, but used very few of them. Honestly, I found GURPS to be most useful when I was converting other games and supplements for use with it.

I fell out of love with GURPS, and can't honestly see myself using it again, but man I got a lot of mileage out of this baby. My copy is so beaten, it barely stays together.

6. Birthright
While I was never a fan of the 2nd edition AD&D rules, I spent a greater part of the 90's running my fantasy campaigns in TSR's Birthright setting. I initially picked it up in a bargain bin at a book store, and was so impressed with it, I couldn't wait to run it. For the next six years, all of my D&D campaigns were in the realm of Birthright. When WotC came out with 3rd edition, I converted my BR campaign to 3rd (only to later discover that there was a thriving on-line BR Community that had done the work for me). I even once ran BR with GURPS 3rd edition (again, GURPS Snob).

I still have a fond spot in my heart for BR and have been tinkering with a FUDGE version of the game off and on for years. Someday...

5. FUDGE

Speaking of Fudge, I've never actually played this system, but have been tempted to so many times. I've lost track of how many different Fudge campaigns I have planned and never played.

It is such a simple system. It is easy to learn and has my favorite price: FREE!

Someday I will play this game. I must. I promise myself.

4. Death on the Reik

Of all the pre-packaged adventures I have ever run, this is my all time favorite. Death on the Reik (DotR) was originally written for the first edition of Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay.

It is the ultimate sandbox adventure. Early into it, the characters come into possession of a trading ship and become traders. Along the way, they can go anywhere, but they are hounded by cultists, Skaven, vampires, and come across some pretty cool places to explore.

It is part of the mega-campaign called "The Enemy Within", but is my favorite part of the whole campaign. I've played many miles with this book and have many memorable campaign moments.

3. Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Dungeon Master's Guide (1st ed.)

I love this book. While first edition may not be my "go-to" edition of the game that is dear to my heart, this guide is my "go-to" reference. I have referenced Gygax's big-book-of-everything even when I'm not playing D&D. For instance, are you playing a science fiction game and your players are stranded on an alien planet with only horse-like creatures for transportation and you need to know how long it will take them traveling overland to reach civilization? Look here. What if there is a monsoon? Look here. Need trappings for an abandoned temple they found? Look here.

This is such a use full book and even if a game master doesn't find it as use full as I do, it is hard to deny the influence this one tome has had on every edition of Dungeons & Dragons, and just about every other fantasy RPG that came after it.

I chose this cover, for this is the one I have in my collection. I also go against the grain of the norm, and find this cover to be my favorite.

2. Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay (1st edition)

The past ten years of my gaming life have been dedicated to both 1st edition WFRP and 2nd edition. I own the controversial 3rd edition, but have never played it.

This game is genius. What would you get if you took D&D, crossed it with Call of Chtulhu and really hyped up the violence level to the point that combat is deadly and should be avoided? What if that game had a really cool character advancement system where the characters advanced through different careers versus "leveling up"? What if that game had a solid Sword and Sorcery vibe versus a Tolkienish Fantasy realm? What game would it be? Answer: This guy.

I currently play 2nd edition, but the first edition is still one of my favorites; namely, it is my favorite because everything needed is in one book: character creation, game master material on running the game and a monster manual. I love gaming products where everything needed to play is in one volume.

WFRP is a game I will always return to.

1. Dungeons & Dragons
And when I say "Dee and Dee" I'm sayin' any version that came before 1989. This bad boy pictured to the left is the first version of D&D I owned, and was the first RPG I owned (but not the first I ever played - that distinction goes to The Fantasy Trip).

When I was playing in the early 80's, me and my buddies made no distinction between "Basic" D&D and "Advanced" D&D. We also didn't care what version of D&D "Basic" we played with either. Meaning, we gleefully used the Moldvay "five basic sets: Basic, Expert, Companion, Masters, Immortals" and combined them with AD&D.

Our games were a mash of all the available rules. We used Classes and Races, but ignored level limits, and race/class restrictions. We used the Immortal rules to advance our characters to godhood. We got our hands on The Expedition to the Barrier Peaks and had laser weapons alongside vorpal swords. It didn't matter to us, it was all D&D.

When I play the Grand Daddy now, I tend to use Chris Gonnerman's Basic Fantasy Role Playing Game (BFRPG), but in my heart, I'm still playing this game and I'm still 12 and in wonder.

Five Books I Couldn't Live Without

2011-10-10T10:33:00.000-08:00

My geekness has been reduced to reading and watching movies as of late. As I mentioned in a previous post, gaming just isn't in the cards for me right now. So my perusal of all things geek has been limited this summer, mostly to reading.

Just for fun, I thought "what five books in my collection could I absolutely not live without?" This was not an easy selection to come to. I love books. The selections I made are not necessarily my all-time favorite reads, but they are books that I love to read, and over the years have returned to continually.

The list:

5. The Annotated H.P. Lovecraft, edited by S.T. Joshi

Here is a book that I continually enjoy reading. Some Lovecraft enthusiasts are not in agreement with Mr. Joshi's criticism, but I always find his studies enjoyable and approachable. He can be opinionated, and I don't always agree with his opinions, but still, hands down, this is my favorite way to enjoy and study the works of H.P. Lovecraft. I only wish that one day I will acquire the book More Annotated H.P. Lovecraft, also edited by S.T. Joshi.

4. J.R.R. Tolkien: The Lord of the Rings, Illustrated by Alan Lee

In my opinion, the best way to read tLotR is a marathon session of all three volumes together, as one massive book. If you're going to do that, then again in my opinion, nothing sets the tone better then the gorgeous water colors and pencils of Mr. Alan Lee. This is a massive book that I have read twice (putting my times of reading tLotR at three - not high enough to put me in the ranks of "serious Tolkien fans". It does not fit easily in a back pack, and thus might not be the best book to take to the beach, but is awesome just to behold.

3. The Annotated Hobbit, by J.R.R. Tolkien, edited by Douglas A. Anderson

Tolkien makes my list twice. The Hobbit was my first introduction to his writing, and it is a book I have read more times then I can count. I enjoy it more than The Lord of the Rings, and this is my favorite edition of the work to read.

Douglas A. Anderson is a good editor. His notes are intriguing, and this is actually the book that put me on the path of discovering for myself the roots of fantasy. If the roots of fantasy is a subject you enjoy then I can not recommend this book more.

2. The Essential Ellison, a 35 - Year Retrospective

Harlan Ellison to me is one of the greats. His short stories hit the range of emotions for me from tantalizing to "I think I've been punched in the stomach and might be sick" with everything else in between. He has an amazing mind that I admire.

Ellison has challenged me, angered me and sickened me. While this book doesn't have all of his greatest stories, it has enough to serve as an introduction to him and the world of speculative fiction. I've read it cover to cover, and four or five times a year, I pull it off the shelf, turn to a random selection and read. Great stuff from stories to essays.

1. Ender's Game, by Orson Scott Card

Absolutely, hands down, if I were told I could have only one book to last me the rest of my life, it would be Orson Scott Card's Ender's Game. I am not putting forward that it is the greatest book ever written, but for me, it is the book that fired my imagination and sent me spiraling into the world of science fiction. I was a science fiction fan before reading this, but this is the one book that I recommend to anyone who even remotely likes sci-fi. If they hate sci-fi, I even encourage them to read it, in hopes that it will change their minds. I've bought many copies of this over the years, as I tend to hand it off as a gift to people I've encountered that have not read it, but I always replace it with a copy from one of my favorite used book stores.

It is action packed, thought provoking and at times gut-wrenching. Yes, I love me some Ender's Game.

Conan or Clonan?

2011-10-04T18:24:00.000-08:00

In this post, I am referring to the new Conan: The Barbarian movie. Let me state first that I have spent most of my summer reading, and in some cases re-reading, all things Robert E. Howard.

I've always been a fan of Conan, and I've been a peripheral fan of REH; however, it was within the past two years that I became a hard core REH fan.

My introduction to the character of Conan came from issues of Marvel Comic's The Savage Sword of Conan. These comics coupled with the "Arnan" movie drove me to a thirst for all things Conan that has lasted twenty years. As an adolescent, I devoured every Tor Conan paperback that I came across, gleefully innocent of the fact that most didn't match up to the real thing, and over the years, I have followed Conan in comic book form, traveling from Marvel to Dark Horse.

I'm not sure why it took me so long to become a REH fan, but it did. I read other things besides Conan, namely Kull and a few, odd Solomon Kane stories, but I never felt the need to dive into Howard's other creations. This changed with the recent Del Rey Robert E. Howard library series.

I bought them all as they came out, and read the Conan stories immediately. I must admit, I believe this is the first time I had ever read all of the Conan stories, I'm sure I had read most of them in one form or another - mostly various comics adaptions, but never all of them. My initial experience to the true Howard Conan stories was also through the Lancer editions edited by L. Sprague de Camp. Thus, I had never read un-edited Howard.

As I said, it was not until early this past spring that I began reading everything Howard that I could get my hands on. I bought all of the Del-Rey trade paper backs as they came out (minus The Horror Stories of REH, which I for some reason missed). It started because I was so impressed by the Solomon Kane stories that I immediately launched into the Kull stories, followed quickly by Bran Mak Morn, both "Best of" books, El Borak and sadly the last in the series "Historical Tales".

Wow. I am hooked. That being said, I finally found time to see the latest Conan movie at my local second-run-bargain theater. Even though I am now a solid REH enthusiast, I am not an REH Purist; meaning, there are REH fans that loath pastiche. It has been years since I've read any Conan pastiche (other than in comics, which I have read a mountain or two of), and while I am certain I most likely would not enjoy the Tor pastiche novels as much as pure REH, I do have fond memories of reading them. I will have to revisit them one day.

Even though I am not an REH Purist, I did not have high hopes for the new film. My feeling was that if it was better then Conan The Destroyer, or at least as good as "Arnan" The Barbarian (which I still enjoy watching to this day), I would be happy.

I left the theater happy with the $3 I spent on watching it. My son, who is neither an REH fan, nor a particularly big Conan fan, enjoyed it as well. Yes, I have problems with the overall plot, particularly, I had problems with the fact that for nearly two hours our heroes are dreading the bad guy completing and activating the mask. Spoiler Alert: Big Bad Guy does so, but the mask doesn't seem to do much of anything. It was akin to Sauron gaining the One Ring and after much dread, it just looks pretty on his finger.

There are other quibbles, Jason Mamoa has brown eyes, not blue, etc.. However, it was a fun movie. Unfortunately, it wasn't enough of a box office smash to warrant more Conan movies and that is sad. I can promise you this, it's better then, and truer to Howard's vision then the television show Conan the Adventurer, and the cartoon of the same name and don't even get me started on Conan and the Young Warriors.

Overall, three stars. It is not Conan, but is just more Clonan, but check your brain at the popcorn stand and enjoy.

Trying to Claw My Way Back from the Dead

2011-09-29T19:52:00.000-08:00

It has been a hellishly busy summer that has left me no time for gaming or blogging. Things are starting to slow down for me, and with more free time, I'm going to blog more. I wish I would be gaming more, but that is still not in the cards for me.

To all of those that read this blog during my absence and made comments, thank you so very much. I appreciate the support.

My Ignored Blog

2011-07-17T17:51:00.000-08:00

Work has been hellishly busy for me the past few months, hence my silence on this blog. On a sadder note, I've finally admitted to myself that my work schedule just does not jive with being able to participate in a face-to-face group. I really dig the people in my group and hope to do the occasional board game with them; however, running or even taking part in a regular game just is not in the cards for me. I'm hoping for a career change in three years, but that is a ways away.

I am currently trying to put together an online game. I play in a Tunnels and Trolls play-by-post and enjoy it, but it is slow and I don't mean that as a criticism of the game, it is just the nature of play-by-post.

I'm not sure if I will run a play-by-post or not. I can't guarantee any regular posting. I would much rather try running something using Skype and/or Fantasy Grounds II. Until I get something going, my gaming is done for now. I will continue posting. I actually have some changes for this blog that I am anxious to get under way. More to come on that, hopefully soon.

Conan, Illustrated through the Ages

2011-06-14T18:39:00.000-08:00

In anticipation of the new Conan movie being released in August of this year, my mind and free reading time has been occupied with the writings of Robert E. Howard. I have not been reading his Conan stories, per se; however, I did recently read his Kull stories and his Bran Mak Morn tales. Currently, I'm reading El Borak.

The character of Conan has always intrigued me, but (and here REH enthusiasts are free to hate me) my favorite media to enjoy Conan tales has always been in the medium of comics, be those stories directly REH inspired or not.

Don't get me wrong, I enjoy a good Conan yarn written by the man himself, "Red Nails" and "The Tower of the Elephant" being two of

my favorites, but I'm quickly finding that REH's writing was more powerful with his other, lesser known characters versus with Conan. I believe this is because in Conan he found a marketable character that become more "bread and butter" for him rather then exploratory.

I did a quick search of Conan illustrations, and found it interesting to show case how the Barbarian has been depicted in illustrative interpretations throughout the years.

Pictured above is, as far as I know, the first professional attempt at illustrating the character of Conan. It is an interior illustration from the December 1932 issue of Weird Tales. Consequently, "The Phoenix on the Sword" was Howard's first Conan tale successfully sold (and was of course a re-write of the Kull tale "By This Ax I Rule"). The illustration above is by Jayem Wilcox. I don't know much about Jayem Wilcox. A quick Google search didn't turn up a whole lot, but (as far as I know) he goes down in history as the first artist to render a drawing of Howard's Conan character.

Howard's Conan tales were granted "issue cover status" nine times in Weird Tales. All nine covers were by fan favorite Margaret Brundage. Brundage was known (and favored) for her images depicting bondage and flagellation of women, her women being soft, with a doe like innocence, their faces contorted with fear from the situations Brundage depicts them in. I find her illustrations charged with an undercurrent of repressed sexuality.

Of the nine Conan covers she painted, only three prominently featured the Cimmerian. Those were the May 1934 issue ("Queen of the Black Coast"), August 1934 ("The Devil in Iron") and December 1935 ("The Hour of the Dragon).

So from 1932 to 1935, these were the depictions of the Cimmerian.

The next time Conan would grace the cover of a magazine was in August 1948, issue 8 of Avon Fantasy Reader ("Queen of the Black Coast") then again in October 1949, issue 10 of the same ("A Witch Shall be Born").

Avon Fantasy Reader (hereby referred to as AFR) was published from 1946 to 1952 and ran for 18 issues in total.

AFR published (reprinted actually) works by REH, HPL, C.L. Moore and A. Merritt just to name a few.

I could find no information regarding who illustrated the covers for these two issues. While I find that I prefer the depictions of the damsels in Brundage's illustrations, I find the depiction of Conan on much the same mark as first Wilcox and later Brundage depicted him.

I find the cover of issue 10 interesting as it features a Conan without a "shaggy mane". Conan as depicted here has a decidedly Romanesque look to him, which I also noticed in Jayme Wilcox's interior illustration for "The Phoenix on the Sword". On another side note, I do dig the "target" bra worn by the damsel on the cover of issue 10. It is a bit, mesmerizing.

In 1950, Conan would move from magazine covers to his first collected book editions, the

hardback editions published by Gnome Press from 1950 to 1957.

GP would published seven volumes, collecting together not only those stories which first saw light in Weird Tales but also included previously unpublished tales. It was with Gnome Press that L. Sprague de Camp would begin his habit of rewriting Howard tales to "improve" upon them.

It was also in the final volume of these editions, The Return of Conan (1957) that the first Conan pastiche was born, written by Bjorn Nyberg.

Five of the seven volumes had Conan depicted upon their covers. 1950's Conan the Conquerer (AKA, The Hour of the Dragon) featured a simple drawing of another Romanesque Cimmerian by John Forte. Forte was primarily a comics artist best known for his work on Legion of Super Heroes.

The Coming of Conan, 1953, was for me the most interesting interpretation of Conan to date. The art is by Frank Kelley Freas. Freas was a Hugo award winning artist. He did illustrations for books, magazines, album covers and even NASA (more of his art can be found here).

It wasn't until Lancer Books published Conan the Adventurer in 1966, that Frank Frazetta would paint his character defining images that would influence every artist that depicted Conan after him.

Appendix N: Leigh Brackett's "The Halfling and Other Stories"

2011-05-30T14:34:00.000-08:00

While I have immensely enjoyed Leigh Brackett, and will undoubtedly read more from her, this will be the last of my Leigh Brackett Appendix N entries for a while. I am feeling the need to move further down my reading list of Anderson to Zelazny.

I found my copy of this book in a used book store, and while I have seen it for sale on-line, I encourage you to haunt your local used book stores first, as I firmly believe in supporting local owned businesses.

As far as I know, this book and many of the stories contained within it are out of print.

My copy is dog eared, beaten up, stained with loose pages. Luckily, it is intact and I only paid $1. It is a paperback first Ace Books printing from 1973. I was unable to confirm who the cover art was by, any information on this would be appreciated. There was a second Ace printing done in 1983 which has cover art cited to Mel Odom.

It contains the following stories: "The Halfling", "The Dancing Girl of Ganymede", "The Citadel of Lost Ages", "All the Colors of the Rainbow", "The Shadows", "Enchantress of Venus", "The Lake of the Gone Forever" and "The Truants". Strangely, "The Truants" is not included in the table of contents, nor is any first printing information provided for it in the Acknowledgements section. I was able to find said information with minimal research.

"The Halfling" being the title story, was the first in the collection. It first appeared in Astonishing Stories, 1943. While it was not my favourite story in the collection, it showcased Brackett's ability to write across genres as it was a science fiction story, but had a definite hard boiled noire feel to it. Halflings in Brackett's universe are not the happy hobbits found in Tolkien's world. In Brackett's stories, a halfling is a creature that is half human and half something else. It is a concept seen in her novel The Sword of Rhiannon, and to a lesser extent, her Skaith novels as well. It is a concept that I find intriguing, and I am considering adopting it into my own D&D universe; perhaps retiring the happy hobbits of "Tolkienville".

"The Dancing Girl of Ganymede" first appeared in Thrilling Wonder Stories, 1950. This story was a striking cross between C.L. Moore's "Shambleau" and Philip K. Dick's novel, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? Interestingly enough, C.L. Moore's Northwest Smith story was published in Weird Tales in 1933, while Androids was not published until 1968. I wonder if Moore's story influenced Brackett, and consequently, Brackett influenced Dick? Honestly, I am not enough of a scholar on any of the three to say with any certainty. I draw connections between these three as a casual reader. I point out a connection to Catherine Moore as "Dancing Girl" shares a plot structure used to a large extent (perhaps too large of an extent) by Moore in her Northwest Smith stories; that being "Boy meets Girl, Girl turns out to be far more then Boy anticipated". I only use "Shambleau" as an example as it was the first to pop into my head by Moore; actually, any number of her Smith stories would work nicely. As to the connection to Philip K. Dick, there is a theme shared in both "Dancing Girl" and "Androids", "Man vs. Machine, and the rights of said machines".

"The Citadel of Lost Ages" first appeared in Thrilling Wonder Stories, 1950. This story reminded me of a novel by Henry Kuttner, The Dark World, published 1946. Thematically both are similar, but my connection may be born of the fact that I read The Dark World not too long ago.

"All the Colors of the Rainbow", Venture Science Fiction, 1957. This story stood out for me the most in the entire collection. Here Brackett tackles racism as only a science fiction writer can. I found it, interesting, sad and still (sadly) relevant.

"The Shadows", Startling Stories, 1952. This was a straight up "bug-hunt"; although in this case the "bugs" were shadows. It contained the most interesting quote in the collection: "We aren't welcome in the universe. I don't know why. Maybe it's because we're not content to be the animals we are, but must always be pretending that we're something else, prying about and upsetting things, grasping after stars, making trouble and screaming because it hurts. I don't know. I only know that we are hated. Everywhere I've been, everywhere there was a man, they've been gotten rid of somehow". Substitute "world" for "universe" and "American" for "man" and it is still a phrase that rings true.

"The Enchantress of Venus", Planet Stories, 1949 (also published as "City of the Lost Ones"). This is an Eric John Stark tale; actually, it is the second Stark story written by Brackett, the first being "Queen of the Martian Catacombs". It is a solid Stark story, and a solid story regardless of the protagonist, and I wonder why it has not been re-printed by Paizo in their Planet Stories line?

"The Lake of the Gone Forever", Thrilling Wonder Stories, 1949. I found the reading of this as almost a warning story of those that try to take the magic of the world and keep it for themselves.

"The Truants", Startling Stories, 1950. Again, this story did not appear in the table of contents, so I was surprised and pleased upon reaching the end of "Lake" to find I had one more tale. It is a creepy tale, almost Stephen King like in style, with a rather, in my opinion, silly ending that still satisfied.

Overall, this is a great collection, and read along with the Stark/Skaith stories available from Paizo and The Sword of Rhiannon, serves as a great introduction to the writings of Leigh Brackett.

In Memory of Catherine Jeffrey Jones

2011-05-20T19:10:00.000-08:00

An icon of fantasy art died yesterday. She was more commonly known as Jeffrey Jones. She had sexual reassignment surgery in the 90's.

Her art was inspiring and always intriguing. Plus, her art was always sexy.

Here are two covers by her that I have in my collection.

RIP. You were one of the greats.

More Frank Frazetta Art Inspired by Edgar Rice Burroughs

2011-05-08T16:59:00.000-08:00

I found a few books that I had forgotten that I bought in San Diego on a recent family vacation. Among them was this gorgeous Frank Frazetta cover for Savage Pellucidar. My copy is a fourth priting by Ace Books circa 1973.

Again, I am struck by how sexy the women in Frazetta's art were. Heavy breasted, round butts, savage, yet innocent.

Enjoy.

More Frank Frazetta Appreciation, or My Wife Has A Frazetta Drawn Ass

2011-05-03T12:17:00.001-08:00

I visited my local favorite used book store today and scored some very fine books. Amongst the score were numerous Edgar Rice Burroughs books to add to my collection. All together, I hauled in some booty of seventeen ERB books, plus a nice clean copy of E.R. Eddison's The Worm Ouroboros, and a nice copy of Fritz Leiber's Ill Met in Lankhmar Volume 1, which had some stories my Leiber collection was missing.

Some of the Burrough's books I all ready had, but five of them featured Frank Frazetta cover art, which I am a proudly and loudly a self proclaimed panting fan-boy of. I will always buy a second copy of a book I all ready have, if said copy features Frazetta art.

The image which I found myself gazing upon the most was the image above, the cover for The Moon Maid. Now please draw your eyes to the shapely bum of the maid herself. Go ahead, and take your time.

Back? Good. The women depicted in Frazetta's art have always...well, we'll just say I've always found them inspiring. Frazetta has forever burned into my head what female beauty is and could be. Call me a pig if you will, but Frank captured my imagination like no other artist ever has.

Here is where I brag. I have always been enraptured by my wife's rear assets. It was not until today that I realized why: my wife has a Frank Frazetta Drawn Ass. I would post a picture to prove it, but it would be the last picture I ever posted, for I would be dead.

However, for your viewing pleasure, two more fabulous ERB inspired Frank Frazetta Art, which show cases my favorite aspect of his dames, the rear view.

The Moon Men

Escape On Venus

C.L. Moore and Henry Kuttner - A Perfect Union

2011-04-24T13:24:00.001-08:00

When Gary Gygax put together his Appendix N for the first edition AD&D DM Guide, there was no way he could have been all inclusive. However, there are some names that are shockingly not on it, such as Clark Ashton Smith. Two other names that often come up in discussions of missing authors are C.L. Moore and Henry Kuttner.

Pictured to the left are Catherine Moore and Henry "Hank" Kuttner. It is nearly impossible to discuss one with the other. The story has been passed down that the two started a relationship when Hank sent a fan letter to the gender ambiguous author C.L. Moore. Catherine Moore was using the gender-non-specific pen name in order to help her boost her sales in a then almost entirely male dominated pulp world.

A friendship began which turned into a marriage. Their marriage was more then just a civil union, it was the union of two talents as well. More then one person that knew the two would often remark that they worked so well together, that when one left the typewriter, the other would sit down, scan what was done then launch right back into the story. Thus it is often hard to say what stories are pure Moore or pure Kuttner or an amalgamation of the two.

I became enamored with their writing when I discovered them through my Planet Stories Subscription through Pazio Publishing. I read Moore's works offered from the Planet Stories line several months ago, and I read Kuttner's Elak of Atlantis around the same time. It was not until recently when I took account of how far behind I had fallen in reading my Planet Stories subscription that I finally read Kuttner's Dark World and Robots Have no Tails.

This offering by Pazio Publishing collects all of the Northwest Smith stories, most of which appeared in Weird Tales beginning in 1933. The biggest negative criticism I have towards the collection is that the character of Northwest Smith has been advertised as a precursor to Han Solo. This is what I expected when I read these stories, but that is not what was delivered. Now I should state that this is not a negative comment towards Moore and her creation; rather, it is a statement that the blurbs are misleading. I was expecting stories of space smugglers out running the law in space ships and a hero blasting away the bad guys. In short, I was expecting Space Opera.

In truth, the Northwest Smith stories are more in the key of H.P. Lovecraft then Star Wars style space opera. This makes sense as both Moore and Kuttner were part of the Lovecraft Circle of the pulp era. Moore offers up stories of creeping doom, often in the guise of alien women that hint towards being the catalyst of mythological creatures such as the Medusa (read Moore's short story "Shambleau" and you will know what I am talking about).

There are no battles in space, I think there may have been one space ship in the entire collection, and the appearance of "blasters" is slim and infrequent. Many of the stories take place on Mars, and this is the Mars of the pulp era that is assumed to have always been habitable. It is a future in an undetermined time in which space travel is frequent and common, even though there is a definite lack of said space travel.

In other reviews, I have read several accounts of readers being disappointed with the definite lack of "space opera-ness". Again, this is not a fault of Moore's but rather it is bad marketing. Moore's Northwest Smith stories are engaging and a worth while read; however, the reader should know what he is getting into.

It would be easy enough to place these same stories not on Mars, but instead on Earth or an earth like world. The space ships which are mentioned could be left out, and the few blasters that appear could be replaced with swords. If these things were done, then these would be Sword & Sorcery tales albeit somber ones with a great amount of creeping horror but short on sword swinging action.

If this were done, then I think some of the charm of the Northwest Smith stories would be lost. As they are written they are good stories, some great. They are not Space Opera. They are more Sword and Planet, without the "swords"; perhaps even the sub genre of Planetary Romance could apply.

Pictured to the left is an illustration of the alien from "Shambleau"(not included in the Planet Stories volume, I should point out) . It is the first story in the Planet Stories collection and the first published Northwest Smith story. They appear in the volume by publication date, and nearly half of them appeared not in Weird Tales but in fanzines.

"Shambleau" is a strong story. Upon reading it, I was immediately sucked into the book as a whole; however, I quickly realized after reading three more stories in succession that Moore was writing this with an eye towards publication. She had a definite formula she was following and she did so stringently with the intent of publishing and putting food on the table. This was a common practice in the hey day of pulp weird/science/fantasy fiction. Many of the authors were full time writers and at only a few cents per word, they were forced to create regularly and publish as much as possible. This meant going with what sold. Moore knew she had a winner with Northwest Smith, so she stuck to the formula. Unfortunately, when the Northwest Smith stories are read in succession, this leads to predictability. They are worth reading, but do yourself a favor and do not read them all in succession. Take your time with this book. Read a story, set it down and read another the following week or month.

I did not have the same experience when I read Moore's Black God's Kiss. Perhaps this was due to the fact that there are only six of them. There was a formula to these stories as well, not too different from the formula used with her Northwest Smith stories.

These stories are strongly influenced by Lovecraftian style horror as well, but while the Northwest Smith stories may be difficult to place in a genre, her Jirel of Joiry stories are not. They are Sword & Sorcery, and it is obvious that Moore was hoping to ride on the coat tails of the success of Robert E. Howard with these stories. That isn't to say she wrote Conan pastiche with a red-haired woman in place of the sullen eyed barbarian. No, the Jirel of Joiry stories are unique to themselves.

What I found enjoyable about them is while the Northwest Smith stories were episodic, the Jirel of Joiry tales taken as a whole read almost like a novel. Each successive story references the former and Jirel's actions in previous stories have consequences that she must face. This may be why I didn't notice the formulaic nature of them when read successively.

I believe most fans are attracted to Moore's Northwest Smith stories, but for me her Jirel of Joiry tales are what sucked me in. I found Jirel more of an early ancestor of Roy Thomas and Barry Windor-Smith's Marvel Comics character Red Sonja. The ancestor's normally attributed to Red Sonja are either Howard's Red Sonya of Rogatino ("The Shadow of the Vulture) and/or another Howard character Dark Agnes de Chastillon, a swords-woman of 16th century France.

It was Howard who inspired the creation of Jirel of Joiry for Moore was very taken with the first Dark Agnes story, "Sword Woman". I have not had the pleasure of reading "The Shadow of the Vulture" nor have I read any Dark Agnes stories (of which there are only two complete stories and a third draft) beyond last month's offering in Dark Horse's Robert E. Howard's Savage Sword #1, but instinct speaks to me and says that Moore was just as much responsible for the birth of Red Sonja as Howard himself was.

I shall move onto Henry Kuttner, but I would like to point out that the story "Quest of the Starstone" appears in both Northwest of Earth and Black God's Kiss. It is interesting to read because it was written with Henry Kuttner. It is a meeting of Northwest Smith and Jirel of Joiry, kind of an early "Marvel Team-up"; unfortunately, it is the weakest story of both volumes, and I felt cheated having it appear in both books.

I read Henry Kuttner's Elak of Atlantis prior to any of Moore's stories. I found this book in a used book store. I knew of the Planet Stories books, but had not bothered to investigate them. My decision to subscribe was based upon the strength of this book.

Consequently, I only picked it up for I am always interested in potential Clonan characters, and Elak seemed to fit the bill. I was wrong. Elak of Atlantis is not a Clonan. He and his sidekick Lycon have more in common with Fritz Leiber's Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser then Conan.

Don't get me wrong, all of the tropes of Sword & Sorcery are there and it would be naive to say that Howard's success in the field didn't have anything to do with Hank Kuttner creating the Elak stories; however, they stand on their own, in the spirit of Howard, but not simple pastiche (and not to get off on a rant here, but even though I use the words "simple pastiche" I have no hang ups with Howard Pastiche stories -- many Howard fans do, I'm not one of them; not to mention, there has been some good pastiche written, particularly by Karl Edward Wagner).

It is a shame that there were only four Elak stories written. I read these over a year ago, and while I remember enjoying them, the particulars all ready fade from memory, but I enjoyed them enough that I know this book will warrant future re-readings to pass a lazy warm Sunday afternoon. Included in this volume are two Prince Raynor stories, inferior to the Elak stories, but still good stories on their own merit.

The Dark World was a great read and stands out as a reason that Ray Bradbury calls Kuttner a "neglected master". Just as I did with Leigh Brackett's Skaith books, I found my hungry DM mind filling up with great world building concepts born of this short novel.

Kuttner presents an intriguing world, a parallel universe to our own in which magic is real, but is perhaps the result of super-science unexplored within our own realm. Vampires, werewolves and gorgons exist, but they are mutations.

The Dark World is Sword & Sorcery, and it is very good Sword & Sorcery. Piers Anthony, in his introduction to the book, points out that Kuttner makes many rookie mistakes with writing, and it is true that he does, but as Anthony points out, the story is strong enough that you do not notice.

I have been toying with the idea for some time now of presenting to my players a fantasy world that they are sucked into from our own world, although, maybe not from our time period.

The initial idea was generated while reading Edgar Rice Burrough's "Pellucidar" stories, and sprouted while reading Brackett's Skaith books. The Dark World just might be the rain that cements it all together for me.

That is the best part of reading selections from Gygax's Appendix N (and authors that were not included, but should have been such as Moore and Kuttner). Each book I have read has given me something, at least a kernel of an idea. Ideas are germinating, and that is what Gary Gygax was hoping he could do for fellow gamers by offering them Appendix N. The experiment was successful.

Galloway Gallegher, the protagonist of the stories collected in Robots Have No Tails was familiar with successful experiments, but only when he was loaded.

The five stories collected in this book were too short, and I regret that there only will ever be five. They are not perfect and the science in the science fiction aspect is suspect. Kuttner may not have been big on research, but he was big on fun.

Fun is what is promised in this book and fun is what is delivered. Each story was short to read and was a joy. I didn't gleam many ideas from these; however, I can easily see a drunken genius gnome inventor named after Galloway Gallegher making an appearance in my Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay game soon.

An introduction by C.L. Moore (written in 1952) is included in the Planet Stories edition. The author name given for these stories was originally "Lewis Padgett". Lewis Padgett is a pseudonym created from both their mothers' maiden names.

Moore insists in her introduction that these were Kuttner's stories, written by him with no help from her, but he use of the joint pseudonym (one of several that the two used) suggests that the opposite is true.

Personally, I like to think that Moore did help write these. I have no proof that such is the case, but I like the idea of it. I like imagining the two chuckling. One looking over the other's shoulder then saying "move over, I have an idea". That sounds perfect to me.

I will end this post with an enlargement from the cover art from the first printing of the book, for no other reason then I like it.

Appendix N: Leigh Brackett III

2011-04-09T15:37:00.001-08:00

I have a lot of blogging to catch up on, so the final three volumes in the Planet Stories series reprinting classic Leigh Brackett stories are going to get the short treatment.

The Hounds of Skaith and The Reavers of Skaith complete Brackett's John Erik Stark trilogy begun with The Ginger Star and introduced in The Secret of Sinharat. In my last exploration of Brackett's work, I mentioned that her writing generates world building ideas for me. That statement remains true with both of these continuations.

Brackett's writing is ripe with several world building concepts for the hungry DM's mind. I'm still fighting the temptation to scrap my own world of "the Dark Ways" and base my world upon Skaith. No doubt, several ideas will emerge that are steeped in her writing.

I don't want to give away particulars of the story itself, but I do wish to mention that I feared there would not be a satisfactory ending to the trilogy. In my opinion, The Reavers of Skaith does conclude nicely. I can not say it does so without the use of deus ex machina.

The Sword of Rhiannon delivers just as well as her Stark stories; perhaps even a bit better. As much as I enjoyed the Stark works, I enjoyed Rhiannon even more so. It is a well told, fast paced, action packed work that has just as much imagination as her other works.

In D&D terms, the actual Sword of Rhiannon of the stories name sake serves as an excellent example of how an artifact can be used well to form an excellent story. Other then that, I saw no direct examples of tropes from the game that were obviously influenced by Brackett's works. No doubt, the level of action and adventure were what the games designers were shooting for. In that way, there is a direct influence.

I have a tendency when reading works written around the same time period as Tolkien to see if the old scholar had any influence upon the author. In Brackett's case, it is easy to say no he did not. While there are parallels with Edgar Rice Burrough's works, there is a definite lack of High Fantasy Tolkienism. "High Fantasy" as a sub genre does not apply to her either.

Her stories that I have read would most likely be classified as Sword and Planet; for this reason, Edgar Rice Burrough's name shall always be tagged to her. I believe that to classify her as a Burrough's mimic is a naive assumption. Yes, she does work with the tropes first made popular by ERB, but her writing is too original for her to be called an imitator.

Overall, I have enjoyed Brackett's writing immensely. Of the Appendix N writers I reviewed for this series thus far, I've enjoyed her writing the most, with Poul Anderson being a very close second.

I do have to state a criticism towards Planet Stories itself. The typos continued through all three of these books. Please Pazio, hire better copy editors.

Game On!

2011-04-05T16:12:00.000-08:00

There has been a long silence on the gaming front for me, at least as far as my face to face group goes. I've been away from home for two weeks, but tonight is the night. It is time for some more Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay.

Gaming has continued for me. I've done a bit of solo delving into Tunnels and Trolls: City of Terror, which I need to do an update post or two for. More exciting then that is I have joined an play by post game, and more to come on that as well.

Come to think of it, I have lots of posting to do. So little time, so many dice.

Solo Delving - The City of Terrors - 2nd Delve

2011-03-21T21:40:00.001-08:00

I sat in my hotel room tonight with the sad short delving life of Halk the Pretty eating at my soul. I couldn't let it rest. I rolled up a new character: Miss Greta the Ugly.

Greta was betrothed to Halk the Pretty. She knew that of all the trolls he could have had, she was the last he would want. When he ran off for the City of Gull several months ago, he claimed he was going to win his fortune then return. Greta didn't believe him. For months now she as sat in her cave stewing. She just knows that good for nothing pretty boy Halk is probably looking for a new trolless to share a cave with. So she has decided to go to Gull in search of him. If she finds him, oh is he in trouble. In fact. He is lucky that he is dead!

I rolled Greta up with the same method I used for Halk, 4d6 and drop the lowest die; however, I arraigned. I also stole a house rule from Cartomancer. I determined starting gold by rolling 3d6 and multiplying by my highest stat. The short life of Halk indicated to me that a starting character would need a few advantages. Is this cheating? I don't know. I don't care.

Miss Greta the Ugly
Kindred: Troll
Type: Warrior

ST: 42
INT: 14
LK: 15
CON: 48
DEX: 14
CHR: 8
SPD: 10

ADDS: Melee +35/Missile +37

Armor: Complete Mail (11 Hits doubled to 22)

Weapons: Doublebitted Ax (6d + 3 Adds), Common Spear (3d + 1 Add 40 yard range)

Trappings: Warm dry clothing and pack, 1 days rations

Gold: 3 gp

The wealth advantage was huge. I was able to buy some good armor for Greta and she has a massive damage wielding weapon. It was nice that I was able to buy her some sort of a missile weapon as well.

SPOILER ALERT, THE REST OF THIS POST GIVES AWAY DETAILS FROM THE SOLO ADVENTURE. YOU SHOULD NOT READ FURTHER IF YOU WISH TO PLAY IT YOURSELF.

Text in [brackets] indicates directions and choices made in the solo adventure The City of Terrors.

Text in italics indicates crunchy rules stuff.

[115] Greta arrived in the City of Gull by the same method as Halk. Standing outside her hotel Greta tried to determine which way that cheating Halk would have gone. Asking about, she was told the Black Dragon Tavern was nearby. If she knew that scoundrel Halk, he was most likely looking for drink. She went there.

[109] At the Black Dragon, she saw it was the type of establishment that one could buy anything for the right price. She was glad that she only loaned Halk a pittance of gold; however, after buying armor, weapons and trappings for herself, she only had three lonely gold coins in her purse. A gentleman to her left offered to arm wrestle her for a wager.

[73] The gentleman offered to make it more interesting, or she could just make a wager. Greta was supremely confident in her arm wrestling capabilities and told him "Three gold is interesting enough.

[15] The man's name was d'lcsta. He was a formidable opponent.

Each opponent was to roll 2 dice and add in adds. Damage was subtracted from constitution, but the first one reduced to half constitution lost. Greta's half con was 24, d'lcsta's was 20. He had 31 adds, I had 35. No damage was soaked by armor. The combat lasted nine rounds and went back and forth.

d'lcsta was a worthy opponent! However, in the end, Greta won and collected her 3 gold, doubling her wealth.

[109] Greta decided it was time for a drink.

[22] At the bar were two orcs who had obviously had a few. They remarked upon Greta's heritage saying that she could no doubt trace her ancestors back to the four legged variety. Being ugly is old news to Greta. She'd heard much worse from the other trolls while growing up. She decided to ignore them.

[60] That was a bad choice. Greta didn't notice that they had drugged her drink and now she had to fight them!

Greta's constitution was reduced to half for the combat. The orcs had a combined MR of 80, giving them 9 dice and 40 adds to her 6 dice and 38 adds (she was attacking with her doublebitted ax). The combat lasted for 20 rounds. After 8 rounds, it was pretty obvious that they were too evenly matched. They were winning every round, but Greta's armor allowed her to soak 22 hits per round. They would have to roll exceptionally high to do any damage to her. I decided to use "Spite" damage. Each 6 rolled would do 1 point of damage regardless of armor. After 12 more rounds, Greta received 9 points of spite damage total, and eventually she defeated the orcs. On round 19, she did enough damage to reduce their MR to 29 (killing one orc). The next round, she easily defeated the remaining orc.

[6] The orcs put up a good long fight, but in the end, Greta was victorious. Searching the orcs she found a pouch of Wombat Venom.

[115] Greta left the Black Dragon Tavern and returned to her inn where she decided to sleep off the effects of the drug the orcs slipped into her drink and call it a night.

Greta survived and earned 129 Adventure Points! 49 for d'lcsta and 80 for the orcs. Plus she doubled her gold and now has some nifty Wombat Venom! She is hurting; once the effects of the drug wears off she will have a current constitution of 39.

The armor is a huge advangate, but I will definetly be using Spite damage for all of my combats from now on.

Dice

2011-03-21T16:22:00.000-08:00

Tim over at Gothridge Manor made a quick post today entitled "The Way I Play". He mentioned how he enjoys the sound of dice. Yes. I too enjoy the rattle of dice. One of the reasons I always find myself eventually returning to D&D, or one of its clones, is I love all the different shapes of die; however, I really dig the d20.

I have a favorite d20. I'd post a picture of it, but I am out of town and my dice are 300 miles to the North. It is white with black numbers. The corners are slightly rounded. It rolls really well, typically high. If there were a game in Vegas that involved the d20, I would take it, my toothbrush, about $200, and return with 10 times the cash.

It even has a nickname: The PC Killer +20. My players have considered making it disappear on me. I hope they never do. I love that die.

I don't allow virtual dice rollers at my table. No Sir. Real dice only.

I really wish I was in town to game tomorrow evening.

Sigh.

Solo Delving - The City of Terrors

2011-03-20T14:57:00.001-08:00

In anticipation of a play-by-post, Tunnels and Trolls game that I have joined, I decided to give a solo adventure a go.

I own a small number of them, but have never given them much thought. I've always intended to try them; however, I had not gotten around to it. I decided upon Michael Stackpole's The City of Terrors. From what I read, I knew I was picking a tough one to start out with, but I've wanted to dig into this one since I bought it. The edition I own is pictured in this blog. It is a Corgi edition.

From what I've read and the little I've chatted with other T&T enthusiasts, this is a classic. The adventure takes place in the city of Gull. From what I understand, this solo is detailed enough to stand as a gazette of the the city.

For those that care about such things, I used the standard rules included in the solo itself. One change I did make, is I rolled 4d6 for character creation stats, dropping the lowest die and keeping the highest three.

My stay in Gull was short lived.

My character:

Name: Halk the Pretty

Kindred: Troll

Type: Warrior

ST: 45

INT: 15

IQ: 13

LK: 16

CON: 36

DX: 11

CHR: 13

SPD: 11

Personal Adds: +35

Armor: Complete Leather (6 Hits Taken doubled for being a Warrior to 12)

Weapons: Scimitar (4d+0 adds)

Trappings: Warm dry clothing & Pack (I didn't have enough money left to buy anything else)

Money: 5 gold

Halk the Pretty, named so for his charisma score of 13, didn't last long.

SPOILER ALERT: For those that wish to play this solo, be warned I'm handing out spoilers beyond this point. The text in [brackets] indicates where Halk went and/or the decisions I made for him.

Halk, after finding himself a room and paying a rather exorbitant amount of money for it, made is way to the city square [115] just outside his hotel. Wishing to explore, he headed east on the Dark Way [152] .

On the Dark Way, Halk entered a room in the center of which was an old woman. The old lady was gray haired, wore a shawl and had cats everywhere. Halk decided to speak with her [8].

She told Halk her name was Madame Chayalla. Apparently, she does not like intruders and deals with them ruthlessly; however, Halk is "Halk the Pretty" (and since he is a troll, the old bat is obviously near sighted), she told him that since he was so handsome, she would grant him one chance to save himself. Behind her were two doors. Halk was told to choose one: left or right. Halk flipped a coin, and chance took him to the right [51].

Fate was not kind to Halk. Beyond the door was a vicious tiger with an MR of 100. Combat lasted two rounds, neither of which went well for Halk the Pretty.

Thus ended the short adventuring life of Halk the Pretty.

I do believe the next time I give this a go, I'll fight with two weapons. I may even find a solo meant for starting characters and give it a go first.

GRRM's "A Dance with Dragons" -- Do I Care?

2011-03-16T16:32:00.000-08:00

GRRM has finally finished the fifth tome in his "Song of Ice and Fire" series. The release date is July 12, 2011 and this time, he promises he isn't just making shit up. I had lots of enthusiasm for this series during the first three books, but after waiting too long for book four (five years) and finding the fourth volume lacking, my inertia for the series waned. For those not familiar, Martin's books really cooked all the way to the end of book three. Book four moved away from the main characters and took the story no-where (shades of Robert Jordan). Martin followed this sucker-punch to his fans by first promising a fast turn around between books four and five, but ultimately he made us wait six more years. That makes a total of eleven years without the story moving forward.

I resisted reading George Martin's "Ice and Fire" books. Years before, I was talked into Robert Jordan's Rand Land books a go (The Wheel of Time). I gave up after five books in total despair and cursed the terminology "Epic Fantasy". The only reason I ever picked up A Game of Thrones by GRRM, was I was deployed in the Middle East (this was shortly after the events of 9/11) and couldn't afford to be picky about my reading materials, due to the fact that they were in short supply. I picked up AGoT, only because it was long and was a fantasy novel. I enjoyed it so much, I begged my wife to purchase and mail me a copy of book two, A Clash of Kings. I ripped through both volumes while deployed. When I returned stateside, I bought a copy of A Storm of Swords. Finishing that in mid-2002, I waited three more years for book four A Feast for Crows, for which I all ready stated my disappointment.

One of my long time players is a fan of the series, I talked him into reading it. He plans on buying his copy of Dance on publication date, and has even recently re-read the first four books. I'm not so sure I will.

I am leaning towards waiting for a few reasons. The foremost is, I wish to express my anger with Martin for leading his fans on for eleven years. I plan on doing so by not purchasing his book in hard cover. I may wait for the paperback, but I prefer to wait until I find a copy in a used book store. I don't want one penny of my money to go to GRRM.

Fuck him.

Comics: Warlord of Mars #4 (Dynamite Comics)

2011-03-13T17:09:00.001-08:00

Way back in January, I got a hold of Warlord of Mars issues 1 to 3 and wrote of them. Also, this morning, I read and gave my opinion of "Warlord of Mars: Dejah Thoris #1".

I've been busy with work and life as of late, and did not pick up my comics for over a month. I have been reading them all last week. The first one I read was "Warlord of Mars #4".

The issue continues Arvid Nelson's adaption of ERB's A Princess of Mars and brings the story from John Carter's first experience battling a white barsoomian ape to just past his first meeting with Dejah Thoris.

I don't have much to say. The art is great, it is illustrated by Lui Antonio. More can be read of him here. My issue features a cover by Lucio Parrillo, examples of his comics art can be seen here.

My only complaint, and it is a minor one, is I was enjoying the Tars Tarkas back-up feature in the first two issues, and I was hoping to see either more Tars Tarkas back-ups, or stories of other characters from the Barsoom series. Maybe a Sola feature.

There is a back-up feature of sorts and it is interesting. Pages from the journal of John Carter are offered and this issues feature is an examination of the child rearing practices of the Tharks.

Joe Jusko's Dejah Thoris: Interesting Article on the Process of Art.

2011-03-13T16:49:00.000-08:00

My previous perverted rant on my love for Dejah Thoris prompted me to read up on Joe Jusko. I came across this article at comicbookresources.com. If you enjoy seeing the process of art, like I do, it is an interesting read. Click here for the article.

I'm in Love with Dejah Thoris (Warlord of Mars: Dejah Thoris #1 - Dynamite Comics)

2011-03-13T15:03:00.000-08:00

Yes, it is true. I even told my lovely wife that if things ever end badly between her and I, Dejah Thoris is the woman for me.

I picked up my weekly comics this afternoon at my favorite local comics shop. I normally do not go for the whole "multiple covers" gimmick, but I had a hard time choosing between the four covers offered at my store for this issue. I decided upon my favorite two of those available. Pictured immediately to the left is the cover by Paul Renaud that I purchased (check out his page here for more samples of his art). I also had to have the cover pictured below it by Joe Jusko (click here for more art by Jusko).

I have had a thing for Dejah Thoris ever since I got turned onto ERB's A Princess of Mars late last year. Anyone who has read a fair amount of Burroughs knows that he always has a love interest for his heroes (most often a princess) and they are interchangeable variations on the same theme. Burrough's ability to write strong, in-depth female characters was not, in my opinion, his strong suit. That aside, when I read his initial description of Dejah Thoris in A Princess of Mars, I fell in love (read - "lust"):

Her face was oval and beautiful in the extreme, her every feature was finely chiseled and exquisite, her eyes large and lustrous and her head surmounted by a mass of coal black, waving hair....Her skin was of a light reddish copper color, against which the crimson glow of her cheeks and the ruby of her beautifully molded lips shone with a strangely enhancing effect.

And of course, do not forget the fact that she was: ...destitute of clothes...indeed, save for her highly wrought ornaments she was entirely naked, nor could any apparel have enhanced the beauty of her perfect and symmetrical figure.

I instantly fell in love (again, read "lust"), for know this reader, my vision of beauty includes large lustrous eyes, coal black hair and as to complexion, I like an exotic, darker hued look. Naked never hurts.

The second cover by Joe Jusko features another weakness of mine towards the fairer sex, I love a shapely bum. Yes, I am a good-girl art pervert.

I do not own this cover which features a topless illustration by the great Arthur Adams, but I would be willing to shell out some bucks on ebay to correct that dilemma. While I am primarily an "Ass-Man" I have nothing against, and welcome, a well endowed chest. Ahem. I'm just sayin'...

As to the comic itself - aside from my unnatural attraction to an imaginary character that was created 100 years ago and my perverted joy of gazing upon well drawn, nearly nude (or nude), lovely women - it is a good read.

I immediately read it upon returning home. Like the regular Warlord of Mars series, it is written by Arvid Nelson. Mr. Nelson has promised to give his readers a more in depth look at the character of Dejah Thoris then her creator Edgar Rice Burroughs did.

The story opens on the inside cover with a literary trick that ERB used frequently in his stories. The story's narrator is Edgar Rice Burroughs who, in the context of A Princess of Mars was introduced as the nephew of John Carter, referred to as "Uncle Jack" by the narrator. In issue #1 of this series, a short letter dated 1919 from the narrator is presented as a prologue to the story itself.

In this short letter, it is learned that the narrator while renovating his Uncle Jack's cottage in upstate New York, comes across a locked strong box. The strong box contains hand written pages by John Carter. Burroughs discovers in these pages tales of the life of Dejah Thoris, dictated by her to Carter, and written down by him for record. Since barsoomian's do not age after reaching maturity, and Dejah Thoris was over 4 centuries old when Carter met her, this promises to be the first of several tales.

The story itself takes place 437 years before the coming of John Carter to Barsoom. It opens in the midst of a civil war between the twin cities of Greater and Lesser Helium. Both cities fall under the leadership of Jeddak Yorn. Lesser Helium, ruled by Dejah Thoris' grandfather Tardos Mors and his son Mors Kajak, is about to strike a winning blow against Greater Helium when an envoy from Jeddak Yorn arrives to announce an end to hostilities with a marriage between his own son, Dor Valian, and Princess Dejah Thoris.

All are shocked and angry, but Dejah accepts her fate and hopes that by doing so she can put an end to further bloodshed. The story develops and it is learned that Dor Valian is a pudgy, poetry reading scholar, not at all a warrior; however, he states his sympathies to Dejah Thoris and tells her that he knows how awkward and sudden this must seem to her and that he will do his best to honor her.

I don't wish to give more any of the story away, but do encourage you to give it a read. Arvid Nelson and the folks at Dynamite Comics are thus far doing an admirable job of presenting ERB's stories with great respect and I look forward to this series as a new and previously unexplored chapter of the Barsoom saga. "Warlord of Mars: Dejah Thoris" issue 1 is the first part of 5 issues and I believe it will be a continuing series.

All of the covers offered to issue 1 and sample pages from the comic can be found here.

Re-Imagining the Iconic D&D Monster: the Kobold

2011-03-12T17:41:00.001-09:00

Here's my short jump onto the James Maliszewski band wagon.

Kobolds in my D&D campaigns were created as the result of a magical mishap. No one remembers the specifics, but at least two were made: one male, one female.

I rarely use them as encounter fodder; instead, they serve as a poor man's henchmen, most often in the form of slavery. They can be bought cheaply, and will eat just about anything and seem to have "cast-iron" stomachs. Thus they are often fed rotten foods and spoiled meats. They don't seem to mind.

The good thing about kobolds is that they make for cheap slave labor. Their nature leans towards followership to the point that it is odd to find a kobold with an idea of his/her own. They do not however make perfect slaves as their loyalty only lasts until someone else comes along to bully them into betraying whomever they were serving. They also have the attention span of the average gold fish. Most often they are used for menial labor that doesn't take much thought. They are remarkable in one aspect. Despite their seemingly inane stupidity, they learn simple tasks quickly and never seem to forget how to do something. So while it is doubtful that a kobold would be able to master the craftsmanship to become a leather worker, if shown how to properly cure and clean a hide a kobold put to task doing so would do so with no supervision. A typical kobold is able to master one task. So continuing the same example, while the Master Leather worker may have a kobold slave he has trained to cure hides, he would be pushing it to expect that same kobold to learn how to tan, or for that matter, sweep the floor.

While kobolds are sometimes used in combat as canon fodder, it really isn't their best use, as kobolds are cowardly by nature. Most kobolds live amongst others. In every human centric city, kobolds are found. Typically, they do not live in a "wild" state. Occasionally roaming packs of kobolds are found, these are usually the result of their masters having met a short end, but they are easily defeated, or captured. The greatest threat kobolds offer is that they have short pregnancy periods, and mature quickly. A typical female kobold can spawn two litters averaging three pups each, twice a year. Pups reach maturity in two years. For this reason, kobolds are often eunuchs. Those that are not too often cause a population problem that must be dealt with by the city watch, or a band of adventurers looking to make some easy coin.

The Enemy Within Session 6 Report (WFRP)

2011-03-11T16:04:00.000-09:00

After an unexpected delay of a week, the group was able to get together to play out session 6.

Action picked up immediately where session 5 left off. Having discovered a secret door behind a book shelf, the characters - plus Rudolf the Protagonist - entered the secret door and followed a trail of blood they presumed was left by the head of Emilo Valantina, the now headless former leader of the Valantina Gang.

A short off topic bit here, one of the things I like about the Old World setting of WFRP is that there is no "Thieves Guild" like that found in most D&D settings; instead, a community will have one or more gangs, how many depends upon the size of the community. These gangs sometimes work in unison, dividing the vices so to speak, in an attempt not to step on each others' toes. Some are not so civil and are often at odds with each other. Many of these "gangs" are guilds in disguise. One common "guild" that is in reality a "gang" are stevedores and teamsters. Often both guilds are legally recognized by the community they operate in, but in reality, they are strong armed gangs making just as much, often more, from smuggling and racketeering operations. My last campaign was based in Marienburg, and I made heavy use of this theme, as all of the characters worked for the Stevedore "Guild".

Back on topic, the secret passage opened onto a roughly cut set of stairs which, as could be told from smell before sight, led into a sewer passage. They were not long in the sewers before a vague humanoid shape was seen bearing a whip. This vague shape was hunched and from its silhouette a snout and tail could be made out. The thing seemed to be driving a swarm of rats towards the party.

Another aside here. The players immediately thought "Skaven" when they saw the rat-like silhouette. In the Old World, there are rumors that a race of rat-men called Skaven live beneath the cities and towns. Some even believe that their lairs connect into a giant underworld. In this underworld, the Skaven worship their dark god - the Horned Rat - and plot to enslave mankind and rise up as the dominate race. Of course many do not believe that the Skaven exist; even though it is written in history that they once nearly overthrew the Empire. Many believe the tales of a secret race of rat-men are exaggerations. While it is believed that a horde of chaos nearly once destroyed the Empire, many scholars are now of the opinion that it was a horde of Beastmen that just happened to appear "rattish".

Back on topic, the swarm of rats soon overtook them and it was obvious that they had to escape quickly or die a slow death of numerous rat bites. A handy abandoned, but operational, mine cart served as an expedient escape. After making their escape, they discovered that they were not alone in the mine cart. There was a rat chewed body, covered in plague like boils. Also in the cart was an equally disfigured head. Upon the body, they discovered the item that Alphonse Oldenhaller had dispatched them to find.

The mine cart landed them in the Huyderman Gangs' base within the Asylum. They Huydermans' were also under attack, but not from the Valantina Gang. The Huydermans were under attack from some strange cultists and some sort of hideous beast. One of the cultists was a Warlock in league with the Ruinous Powers. The remaining four Huydermans joined forces with them.

The players were nervous about this combat, but in the end, they made some lucky rolls and escaped with a pretty easy win.

Suspecting that they would not get paid, they sent Rudolf - who seemed as baffled by the evenings' events as the player characters - to arrange things with Three Fingered Willy and Alphonse Oldenhaller. A meeting was set up at a ware house belonging to the Oldenhaller Mercantile Family.

At the ware house, they were greeted by Three Fingered Willy and four thugs in either his employ or Alphonse's. When Alphonse entered the room, he looked quizzically at Bartolf and uttered in the form of a question a single world: "Kastor?" Immediately after he did this, he was stabbed from behind by one of the thugs wielding a wicked looking dagger shaped as a tooth. Three Fingered Willy and the other thugs, but not Rudolf, raised similar daggers as Willy shouted "FOR THE YELLOW FANGS!"

Before Willy and his thugs could attack the characters, if they ever were going to, they in turn were attacked from a hidden enemy concealed in the rafters. The "assassin" was never revealed; however, he attacked with weapons of a strange nature. The PCs escaped the ware house as it burned, but aside from recovering a lock box containing 30 GC's, they were never paid.

The PC's spent a few more days in Nuln. They were eventually approached by Rudolf. He told them that things were getting hot in Nuln as the Schatzenheimer Gang were busily trying to find anyone involved in the events of their night at the Asylum, plus Albrecht Oldenhaller was seeking out those responsible for his brother's death. He strongly suggested that they all get out of Nuln.

He has a plan. He has a cousin in Mittlesdorf that is running a gang of outlaws and he is sure he can get the characters on, if they wish.

This adventure is not my own. It is "The Oldenhaller Contract", an adventure that originally appeared in the first edition WFRP rule book. Having never run it before, I decided to give it a go. It was fun, lots of twists and turns. It was later updated for 2nd edition and is available here as a free download.

We will be playing next Tuesday the 15th of March, but work will force me to take a two week break after that.

Hot Elf Chick Summons the Ghost of Gary Gygax

2011-03-10T19:45:00.001-09:00

Yup, I'm doing it too, and it is all this guy's fault. even though technically Zooey Deschanel is not an elf in the movie Elf, but is just dating one, and no, she isn't summoning the ghost of Gary Gygax. Hey, I don't care. I've been in love with her since I first laid eyes on her. Since you're here, and on the off chance that you are here because you know who Gary Gygax was, check out these ultra cool links to free geek swag:

A Quick Primer to Old School Gaming by Matthew Finch

Swords & Wizardry, a 0E Retro-Clone

Or my personal favorite, Basic Fantasy Role-Playing

Groo versus Conan, Thomas Yeats, New ERB Book

2011-03-05T13:13:00.000-09:00

Yes. It is true. A Groo/Conan comic is in the mix. I read about this news on one of my favorite Conan related blogs Crom! here. I direct you there for more information, not to mention, if you dig Conan, like I dig Conan, you will enjoy the blog.

I would also direct you to Thomas Yeat's website here. While Sergio Aragones is drawing Groo, Yeats is drawing Conan. At his site, link above, sample pages can be found.

When visiting Yeat's site, I would direct your attention to the fact that he has advertised there an upcoming project that Edgar Rice Burrough's fans will find exciting: an adaption of The Outlaw of Torn titled The Outlaw Prince. More details found here.

This puts me in a good mood, a new Conan comic featuring my favorite Conan parody in Groo, plus a new ERB project.

Appendix N Birthdays: March

2011-03-01T05:29:00.000-09:00

These are the people that started it all. Without their imaginations, this hobby that we all love may never have been. When applicable, the date of their death is provided. Each month also features "Honourable Mentions". This section is composed of people not listed on Appendix N, but geeky cool, and/or inspiring in some nerd fashion. It is also of course completely subjective and based upon my own opinion. Please notify me if I've missed anyone from Appendix N, made any errors, or if you feel someone should be added to the Honourable Mentions column and please tell me why they should be added.

There is a third column: "Hot Geek Crush of the Month", in which I choose a lovely lady to honor that has some geek cred. Necessary you ask? No, but it is another excuse for me to post pictures of lovely women.

Appendix N:

There are no births for the month of March from those authors listed on the Appendix N list; however, I would be remiss if I did not mention the deaths of two great men that much lore of fantasy gamings is owed: Edgar Rice Burroughs passed March 19, 1950 and Gary Gygax himself died March 4, 2008. RIP.

Honorable Mentions:

March 1: Dirk Benedict (B: 1945; the original Starbuck)

March 3: James Doohan (B: 1920/D: July 20, 2005; Scotty of Star Trek)

March 5: Jake Llyod (B: 1989; painful, but Anakin Skywalker Star Wars: The Phantom Menace)

March 5: Dean Stockwell (B: 1936; Al of Quantom Leap and many other roles)

March 11: Douglas Adams (B: 1952/D: May 11, 2001; The Hitchhiker's Guide novels and others)

March 13: L. Ron Hubbard (B: 1911/D: January 24, 1986; SF author and Scientology founder)

March 22: William Shattner (B: 1931; Captain James T. Kirk USS Enterprise)

March 26: Leonard Nimoy (B: 1931; Spock, this is a big month for Star Trek births)

March 29: Lucy Lawless (B: 1968; Xena and Spartacus: Blood and Sand)

March 31: Ewan McGregor (B: 1971; Obi-Wan of those other so called Star Wars movies)

Hot Geek Crush of the Month:

This was a hard choice to make, but I just spent the better part of the weekend watching Spartacus: Blood and Sand, from which I must say WOW-ZA!

John Jakes Brand of Sword & Sorcery

2011-02-26T12:21:00.000-09:00

John Jakes is best known for his historical fiction, prominently his Kent Family Chronicles and his North and South trilogy; however, before he gained fame for his historical fiction, he was best known for his Sword & Sorcery stories.

Born in Chicago IL March 31, 1932, Jakes sold his first stories to pulp magazines. It was his character Brak the Barbarian that first brought him to my attention.

First off, I want to admit that it was not until recently that I read a single John Jakes story. I was ignorant of his contributions. It was through my gaining interest in Lin Carter in 2010 that I Jakes even came across my radar. Prior to reading about him while researching Carter, I passed him off as a historical novelist that held no interest for me. Ironically, he is my father-in-law's favorite author for his North and South Trilogy.

When Lin Carter formed the Swordsmen and Sorcerers Guild of America (S.A.G.A.) in the 1960's, John Jakes was included in the roll-call amongst fantasy greats such as Poul Anderson, L. Sprague de Camp, Fritz Leiber, Michael Moorcock, Andre Norton, Jack Vance and of course Carter himself. Other then being a loose-knit social club with a drinking agenda, Carter set forth to publish the works of the founding members in the Flashing Swords anthologies. Later on other authors were added to the roll-call, C.J. Cherryh, Katherine Kurtz, Tanith Lee and Roger Zelazny just to name a few.

The premise of S.A.G.A. was a love and respect for the fantasy sub-genre of Sword & Sorcery tales first made popular by Robert E. Howard's Conan, Kull and Dark Agnes stories. Thus S.A.G.A. was a club for like minded authors that shared an enthusiasm for tales of blood, guts, honor, mystery and adventure.

By the 1960's, Tolkien's Lord of the Rings was gaining massive popularity. Riding the coat tails of this popularity was a new found love for the Conan yarns of REH. Conan was most likely saved from obscurity by the editorship of L. Sprague de Camp in the Gnome Press hard cover editions of Howard's tales. Later, Lancer publications would join with more affordable paper back editions and Lin Carter and Bjorn Nyberg would join de Camp as co-conspirators. Some fans have never forgiven the three of them for "finishing" many of Howard's unpublished tales and converting non-Conan tales into Conan tales; however, in my opinion, if they had not done these things, perhaps Sword & Sorcery would not have survived Howard's death. At least, not with the popularity which Conan did, eventually spawning popular comics with Marvel and leading to the making of a movie starring Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Because of the Conan popularity "boom" of the 60's and 70's, it was not uncommon to see many titles featuring a "Clonan" type character and bearing the inscription: in the tradition of Conan. It was these sorts of stories that Jakes set out to write with his Brak the Barbarian tales.

I'm not sure when and to whom Jakes sold his first Brak the Barbarian tale, but according to Lin Carter, Jakes began writing Brak tales in 1963 and sold most of the earliest to the Ziff-Davis magazine Fantastic. The cover to the left is from the 1980 Tower publication of Brak the Barbarian. In its introduction, Jakes states that the title of the first Brak story was "Devils in the Walls" and he also freely admits that it was "...a Howard pastiche". Brak the Barbarian was Jakes first of five collections of Brak stories and first saw print in 1968 with Avon Publishing. It is currently out of print and it took much haunting of used book stores for me to acquire a copy.

I was curious about them for Lin Carter stated his admiration of them more then once. I respect and follow Carter's recommendations; after all, the man was the editor of the fabulous Ballentine Adult Fantasy series, which I have not yet read a bad volume of.

Brak the Barbarian proved to me that Carter's opinion is not infallible. I did not hate the book, but it was not worth the time it took me to find a copy. Brak is a collection of five stories: "The Unspeakable Shrine", "Flame-Face", "The Courts of the Conjurer" , "Ghosts of Stone" and "The Barge of Souls". The edition pictured above that I read is illustrated by Thomas O. Miller, whose art I am unfamiliar with. The stories are loosely connected in the sense that they are sequential, but they could easily be read separately. I gained the sense that Jakes performed much post-editing in an attempt to join them into a weak serial.

In this book, Brak has recently left his home in the north for the fabled land of Khurisdan based upon a flimsy notion that he is destined to do so. In each of the five stories, our hero - who differs from Conan because he has blond hair kept in a braid, and always wears his lion skin pelt (how did a barbarian from the north come across a lion skin pelt?) - in each story he encounters adventure. In the opening story "The Unspeakable Shrine" he does battle with an ancient evil sorcerer named Septegundis and the sorcerer's evil daughter Ariane; both worship the evil Yob-Haggoth. He defeats them, but it is promised that Septegundis and he shall meet again, perhaps in Khurisdan or before. Four more adventures follow and the fifth ends with Brak continuing his journey to Khurisdan.

I expected Brak to be a Clonan. With that I take no umbrage; however, the lack of originality was banal. These stories are in the vein of Conan with Lovecraft imagery thrown in for spice, but they read like the poorest of pastiche. I am not against Conan pastiche. I used to read lots of them in my younger reading years and every now and then I get a yearning to buy one at a used book store, check my brain at the door and read for pure pleasure. They are perhaps a guilty pleasure for me, but I stopped feeling guilty long ago. In hopes that the Brak stories grow stronger, not weaker, I will probably continue to look for them. At the very least, they read quickly. This one was great "airplane" fodder. I like books I can read in entirety on a two or three hour flight, and this one fit the bill.

A much more enjoyable read by Jakes is Mention My Name in Atlantis, 1972 Daw SF Books. From the back cover blurb:

The continent of Atlantis had troubles enough before Conax the Barbarian washed ashore. The king was on his last legs, his generals were plotting, there were those scary lights in the sky, and Hoptor the Vintner's favorite girl was being put up for auction on the slave block.

Then Conax, the self-styled king of Chimeria - a place nobody ever heard of - turned up at the auction with broadsword, his barbaric manners, and his hair-triggered temper.

John Jakes, author of Brak the Barbarian and many fast-moving novels of past and future, has written an uproarious cliffhanger that even Robert E. Howard would have approved...not to mention his legion of readers.

This book was as entertaining as its blurb led it to sound. It clocks in at 142 pages and reads in its entirety easily on a long afternoon sitting, or again on a two or three hour flight. I actually read this novel prior to Brak, and based upon it, I had higher hopes for Brak. In Atlantis, Jakes sets out to satirize the numerous volumes of Howard pastiche that were being published at the time. Note his dedication:

To the memory of the real Robert E. Howard who has been kept spinning in his grave for the last decade by the new antics of his favorite character's overactive ghost, not to mention his busy and admiring imitators.

Jakes' attempt makes for an enjoyable read. It is obvious from the get go that Jakes is even making fun of himself here. Note his description of Conax the Chimerical:

he was young with eyes of brighter blue...A mane of yellow hair reached well below his shoulders.

"Yellow hair", just like Jakes' own creation Brak. I liked Conax, perhaps because I am a fan of Conan pun characters such as Groo the Wanderer; however, it is the main character Hoptor the Vinter that is the real entertainment. Hoptor is a weasel always one step ahead of the law and his creditors. He makes his living by brokering deals, in fact his name is his livelihood. he often gets himself out of a sticky situation by convincing others that he can get them a great deal if they visit X merchant and "mention my name" (hence the title).

Based upon the enjoyability factor of Mention my Name in Atlantis, while I may or may not be done with Brak tales, I am not done with John Jakes.

The Enemy Within Sessions 3, 4 and 5 Report (WFRP)

2011-02-25T14:17:00.000-09:00

I did a quasi report of sessions 3 and 4 previously, but am reposting them here. Also, One of my players posted a report of session three

Session Three:

Session 3 was our first evening with no combat. There was actually minimal rolling of the dice. After the action heavy session 2, this was a nice change of pace. The players dug into the meat of the investigation itself and moved things along nicely. There were only three players for this session. Our new player was once again a no-show, and was for session 4 as well. We have not heard from him and at this point, I've ruled his character on official "Red-Shirt" status. Our out of town player was having technical difficulties and was thus unable to Skype in.

Session Four:

Session 4 was a different beast. We were up to what I now consider full-force, our out of town player was able to Skype in.

Having followed many clues to their conclusion, the bulk of session 4 was spent at a quickened pace. Their investigations from session 3 and a few more leads that the players followed up on in the beginning of session 4 brought them to the conclusion that a butcher by the name of Emil Stark was holding Hannah hostage. Moving at a break neck pace, they arrived at the final confrontation with Emil, whom they killed, and two beasts of chaos, one of which was Hannah the poor missing daughter of the butcher Herr Fleischer - Emil had been feeding her chaos infected sausages and the second was a missing noble rake named Rudi who had also been horribly mutated by Stark.

During the final battle, Gottfried received a critical wound to his left hand, courtesy of a crossbow bolt fired at him by a niggling little street thug named Dirty Dan (truth be told, I don't know if I ever revealed his name to the players - BAD GM! BAD!).

The group first encountered Dan in session one. He offered to take them to an inn that was sure to have open rooms for a mere two pence and instead led them into an ambush of thugs. They encountered him by chance in a tavern during session three. They were hoping for some payback, but Dan eluded them yet again. I had decided that I would give them one more chance at revenge.

It was called out in the adventure, "Sing for Your Supper" that their main antagonist, Emil Stark, was to have a lackey on hand awaiting to ambush them. I arraigned for this lackey to be good-old "I'll do anything for two-bits" Dan. When they arrived at the ambush sight, I rolled a secret Perception test for each player. None of them passed. Dan fired his loaded crossbow at Gottfried. I rolled a "10" for damage, re-rolled Dan's Ballistic Skill and confirmed the critical hit. A total of 15 points of damage was dealt to Gottfried's left hand. Gottfried passed his test to remain conscious and delivered the groups' final vengeance upon Dirty Dan.

They did not deal with the chaos mutations. Instead, they turned Hannah over to her father and the mutated Rudi, Gottfried reported his circumstance to the Cult of Sigmar who dealt with him. This occurred only after they considered burning half of the city down to take out one mutant. Our group has a history of burning cities down.

All of the above happened in session four. I ended the session leaving Gottfried's player in suspense. I didn't do this just to be cruel, that was only a small part of the reason, the main reason was I had just re-read some interesting optional rules on Barber-Surgeons and wanted to make use of those rules.

In the end, despite the fact that the girl and her father were given the final mercy by Shallyan Priests, they received their promised reward of 25 gold crowns, quite a small fortune.

Session Five:

Play action was picked up the morning following the events of session four. My first order of business was determining the fate of Brother Gottfried, Initiate of Sigmar.

I ended session 4 leaving Gottfried's player in suspense. I didn't do this just to be cruel, that was only a small part of the reason, the main reason was I had just re-read some interesting optional rules on Barber-Surgeons and wanted to make use of those rules. I did so in the beginning of session five, and they were entertaining. I was merciful by ruling that Gottfried had spent a pain filled evening at the Cult of Sigmar where they had made it a point to clean and dress the wound. This ensured that he wouldn't have to deal with the nastiness of infection. It also allowed his Fortune Point Pool to replenish.

For those that don't know Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay that well, each character has a number of Fortune Points that he can use each game day. One of these can be spent to re-roll a bad dice roll, and for a few other things as well. The number of a character's fortune points is determined by his Fate Points. Fate Points are spent to avoid death. They are not a "get out of jail free card", meaning, if a player is forced to spend a fate point to pull his bacon out of the fire, it probably means he may have been dealt a deadly critical wound. Crits are deadly in WFRP and can often result in neat new nick names like "Lefty", "One-Eyed Jack", or "Crutch". It is a grim and perilous world.

Thus, having the Barber-Surgeon appear the next day was a great boon for Gottfried. All turned out well for the initiate. The surgery was performed by an old bone-saw that had seen much action in the Imperial Army.

I let five game days pass. This allowed Gottfried some much needed healing time and it gave the characters an opportunity to spend some of the 25 gold crowns they had been paid. Willow the halfling took advantage of this, and had some new armor tailored to fit her small frame. The elven Wizard's Apprentice replenished his stock of magical components, which included some time spent trying to catch fire-flies. Bartloff, being the good protagonist he is (read "Asshole for Hire") went looking for trouble and easy coin.

Trouble he found, along with an offer to make much more money then he'd ever dreamed. He met a fellow protagonist named Rudolf (yes, he had a red nose) that after Rudolf challenged Bartolf to fight, in which Bartolf gave as good as he got, he told him that his boss, one Three-Fingered Willy, was looking to hire a few blokes for a dirty job. Rudolf gave no details, he only stated it involved busting some heads and that it would pay 100 GC for each participant. He also mentioned that if Bartolf knew a few blokes that were looking to make some coin, he could get them in on the deal. The job was to happen in a few days time.

The next night, a thief that had been secretly following Willow around after seeing her pay for new armor, tried to rob them. The players had opted to get themselves a private room instead of staying in the common room that they were previously. Willow awoke to find the thief trying to steal her purse while she slept and she alerted the other characters to the situation. They easily overcame him in a short pursuit. The thief had nothing of value on him but some lock-picks and a dagger. He was also carrying a note with a leaf motif that had one word upon it: "Malindi". Bartolf then shocked Willow with how he dealt with the thief. His solution was to tie the thief's hands behind his back and throw him out the window, where he fell upon his head, snapping his neck.

A couple of nights later, the characters met Rudolf and Three-Fingered Willy and were given more details about the job. The job consisted of raiding a place called The Asylum. The Asylum is a complex that three separate gangs use as a hide-out: the Schatzenheimer's, the Valatina's and the Huyderman's. Three-Fingered Willy is a prominent member of the Schatzenheimer Gang. He has the backing of over half of the gang behind him and he is looking to depose the current gang leader Kurt Volger. Three-Fingered Willy is being bank rolled by Alphonse Oldenhaller, the younger brother of Counciller Albrecht Oldenhaller who is a successful merchant of Nuln.

Alphonse hopes that with a newly organized Schatzenheimer gang on his side, that he can take his older brother's place as head of the Oldenhaller Merchant Family. Also, Alphonse had hired the Schatzenheimer gang to acquire an item for him. Smelling more money then what was offered, Volger has been refusing to turn the item over. Willy was made it a point to not tell them what the item was.

Willy's plan was, he had a majority of the Schatzenheimer gang willing to back him. His "boys" were to be in the hide out that evening, with Volger and a much smaller number of Volger's supporters. Willy had arraigned for the bulk of Volger's supporters to be out that night doing a job, which they were not to return from until early in the morning hours. Willy and Rudolf were going to lead the characters into the hide out where they and Willy's supporters on the inside, would slaughter Volger and his boys. When Volger's other supporters returned in the morning, they would set up an ambush, giving them two choices: accept Willy in charge, or die.

The characters were of course suspicious, but the lure of a king's ransom in gold helped them overcome their doubts. When they arrived at the Schatzenheimer's den, it was obvious that someone had beaten them to the punch. All of the Schatzenheimers were dead. The Valantina Gang had killed them leaving calling cards on the corpses that read: "Congratulations, you have just met the Valantina Anti-Personnel Crew". The characters noticed that the leaf motif on the calling cards, matched the leaf motif they had found on the body of the thief that had tried to rob them. After searching, Willy announced that the item that they were to retrieve from Kurt Volger was missing.

Willy stated that he had to report this to Alphonse Oldenhaller. He asked to characters to enter the Valantina hide out and retrieve the item. An argument occurred at the end of which Willy offered to increase their payment to 150 GC's and he was forced to tell them what the item looked like: a small lead box fixed to a chain, the lead box has a single coin in it, and it should remain inside the box. Rudolf also informed them that the calling card they had found upon the thief was most likely the Valantina's current password.

The agreed to the terms and proceeding forward, they used the password, Malindi, to gain entrance to the Valantina hideout. There, they managed to pass themselves off as stevedores. After posing as stevedores, they managed to gain an audience with the leader of the Valantina gang: Emilio Valantina; however, someone had managed to sneak into Emilo's room and behead him. They found his headless body, no head was found, nor was anything found that matched the description of the item they were sent to retrieve. A trail of blood led to a book shelf and ended. After a short search, they discovered a hidden door behind the bookshelf.

That is where play ended, session 6 will pick up in action.

Today's Find at the Hobby Shop

2011-02-24T18:32:00.000-09:00

After many years of haunting ebay and after being outbid more times then I can remember, I walked into my hobby shop today. Not believing my eyes, I pinched myself to assure I was indeed awake, I spied a copy of WFRP Empire in Flames on the shelf.

For those that don't know, EiF is part five of the classic Enemy Within Campaign. It was published by Games Workshop many moons ago. Fans received it, and Something Rotten in Kislev - the volume preceding it, poorly. While Shadows over Bogenhafen, Death on the Reik and The Power Behind the Throne (the Enemy Within parts one, two and three respectively) were all applauded, most found the final two installments lacking.

I've run SoB and DotR, plus I've been a player in the Enemy Within up through PBtT. I own and have read SRiK. Up until now, I've never had the opportunity to read Empire.

I'm sad to say, while all the pages are there, there are loose pages in the beginning and end; however, the price I paid reflected the damage. I paid $40 and I've routinely seen this book online with a $99 price tag. So overall, I'm happy with the price I paid.

I'm looking forward to finally being able to form my own opinion on the concluding chapter of the Enemy Within.

Today's Score: Pathfinder

2011-02-23T16:42:00.000-09:00

While about town running errands for work, I noticed there were not too many cars parked in front of my local Borders Books Store which is closing soon. I previously mentioned that I had stopped there over the past weekend in hopes of snagging a copy of Pathfinder RPG Core Rulebook; however, I was not willing to spend an hour plus in line for only 20% off cover price.

It was near time for my lunch break anyway, so I rolled the dice and went in. SCORE! There was still one copy left. I bought it, then later was angry when I realized I could have purchased a copy from Amazon for $7 cheaper, and had free shipping, GRRRRR, but at least I have a copy.

I've only had a bit of time to flip through it and I intend on giving it a thorough read before making any solid comments; however, I must say, this is one large handsome book. I've contemplated picking up a copy before, but being a cheap-skate, I always talk myself out of it. I am familiar with Paizo products, as I have a subscription to their Planet Stories line of books. With each shipment, they include a brief catalog describing their products. More then once, after breezing through their product listings, I have been tempted to buy this.

I've been playing the world's most popular roleplaying game for 28 years. In that time, I've seen no less then five new editions. I cut my teeth on this guy:

From there I moved onto Advanced Dungeons & Dragons. Oddly enough, I never really made the conversion to second edition. I bought many of the products (modules, campaign settings, etc.), but found so little difference from 1st and 2nd, that I never purchased a rulebook beyond the Players Handbook until years later when I found a copy of the DM guide in a used bookstore. I never had a problem mixing Basic with Advanced (both 1st and 2nd edition) and it never occurred to me that I shouldn't. My next graduation step was to:

During my high school and college years, the Rules Cyclopedia was my go-to gamer's bible. The largest attraction to it for me was the fact that everything I needed to play was between two covers: players section? Check (levels 1 to 36. 36 for Christ's Sake! Who has time or patience to level their character that high?). Game Masters section? Check. Magic Items? Check. Spells? Check. Monster Manual? Check. Brief Description of The Known World? Check. It had it all.

It was these same attributes that initially attracted me to Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay (first edition). I've always had a thing for "all-in-one-books". That was my initial reason for liking GURPS (3rd edition) and Tunnels and Trolls (5th edition).

When a third edition of D&D was announced for 2000, I initially said "pass". I saw no reason to change. I had been happy with the same old D&D for nearly 17 years. Why would I want to buy all new books? I've always been resistant to "brighter, shinier, newer". I don't get involved in the flame wars that erupt on rpg forums over this issue, in my opinion "edition wars" are one of the lowest forms of nerdage, but I do resist them for one reason: I'm cheap. My cheapness has kept me from buying GURPS 4th edition and T&T 7/7.5. Hey, if it ain't broke (or at least easily fixed) why would I buy a new edition of anything. Heck, I drive a 96 F-150 for two reasons: it runs and it's paid for.

I'm not against others who do enjoy the latest edition of any game that I enjoy and I even sometimes do choose to "upgrade". I did so with WFRP 2nd edition (the current edition I play) and I even purchased the huge, expensive box that is WFRP 3rd edition (I have never played it, and plan on writing more about that on a later date). Tenkar, over at Tenkar's Tavern, even almost has me convinced to give T&T 7.5 a go.

Back to my path to Pathfinder (pun intended), I did eventually try D&D 3; although, I did so kicking and screaming at the request of my gaming group at the time. Despite my doubts, I liked it. I did not like it enough to purchase 3.5 just a few short years later. Again, I did not see the point.

It was for that reason that I was hesitant to buy Pathfinder. From my understanding, PF is a re-working of the 3.5 rules set. Why would I want that? I knew there were problems with 3rd, I'd encountered them myself, and I'd heard of the problems with 3.5; however, I've read mostly positive things about PF and from what I've read, it seems that many of the problems with 3rd and 3.5 have been addressed. I was still resistant though, as there are many great retro-clones available (many for free, my favorite price being the cheap skate I am), not to mention, I still have my old reliable Rules Cyclopedia.

The only good reasons I have are, I can't resist a good sale (even though I could have gotten it cheaper, grumble, grumble) and I'm curious what all the hub-bub is about. I'm not an active part of the OSR. I enjoy it, and originally I started this blog because I though I wanted to be a part of the energy, but frankly, the arguments over which edition is better get tiresome (on both sides of the fence). I have not ever tried 4th edition D&D, and therefore I can not say anything negative about it. In my mind, it is the old New Coke versus Classic Coke battle. I'm a Classic Coke guy, but I can't even really use that example, because I've never tried 4th ed. while I'm sure I did have at least one can of New Coke. 4th edition is confusing to me. I'm not sure what products I would even need, but the nostalgic gamer in me has eyed the Red Box reminiscent of the Monte Cook edition of Basic D&D.

So I have this 500 plus page book of geeky goodness. I'm not sure if I will ever play it, but I do intend on giving it a fair shake.

Lack of time for Geekdom, Harry Potter and Border's Bad Business Practices

2011-02-21T16:57:00.000-09:00

I haven't had much time for blogging as of late. I tried to make up for that today. I still have part two of my Lin Carter series to finish up, plus a couple planned posts exploring Gilgamesh, Beowolf, The Odyssey and The Iliad as precursors to the genre of fantasy. I also have a few reviews of Phoenix Barony products to post, along with updates to my reading lists.

While I've had time to read the subjects at hand, home repairs/remodels and family business have ate into much of my time. I've been concentrating my "geek time" on preparations for my WFRP "The Enemy Within Campaign". On a side note, I've become once again engrossed with jig-saw puzzles. A good jig-saw puzzle to me is just as engaging as a great book. Both keep me up at night. I have also been rejuvenating my interest in painting miniatures as well and hope to post more on that soon (with pictures).

On the TV/Movies angle of my geekdom, I've been slogging though Conan: The Adventurer and I've been watching Spartacus: Blood and Sand. I didn't expect to enjoy Spartacus as much as I have, but have found it enjoyable. At this point, only three episodes in, I would describe it as 300 on Viagra with an unhealthy mix of steroids. On the movie scene, due to the looming tax season and having to watch every penny so I can pay my taxes, I haven't enjoyed as many trips to the theater as I would like. I did manage yesterday to make a rare family trip to one of my favorite second-run theaters, a lovely place called the Bear Tooth that features gourmet pizza and micro-brewed beer (consequently, two of my favorite things in life) to see Harry Potter: The Deathly Hallows Part I. I had not paid any attention to the Harry Potter movies until lately. I viewed them as something I wouldn't enjoy, and consequently have not read any of the novels either. After seeing the trailers for Deathly Hallows, I was intrigued enough to Netflix the prequels and watch them in succession. Both of my children have enjoyed the Potter movies, and books in my son's case, in the past. They are older now, and to find a movie they are willing to watch with me is a serious family treat. All four of us went. My wife, who is decidedly not a geek and has not seen a single Potter movie, even enjoyed it. Aside from a brief altercation with a rude gentleman behind me that felt it his responsibility to give a running commentary throughout the entire flick, we enjoyed it greatly.

On a side note, my wife, daughter and I visited our local Border's Book Store. After reading last week's announcement that they would be closing some 200 of their super stores, I was convinced that ours would be one of those closing. I was right. This gives me mixed feelings. On the one hand, I do not often frequent Borders, or their competitor Barnes & Nobles. On a political level, I am anti-big-box stores. I prefer smaller "mom and pops" stores. My ultimate preference is for used book stores run by a few people that love books, and perhaps has a lazy cat sunning itself in a front window.

However, the prospect of up to 60% off was enough to lure us there to see what we could snag; unfortunately, by the time we got there, the vultures had picked over much of what was left. I had designs upon picking up a copy of Pathfinder (core rulebook), but while there was a copy left, two things kept me from picking it up. One, they were only offering 20% off - I can get a military discount of 15% off at a local hobby store that I like to haunt - and two, judging the size of the line, we were looking at a minimum of a one hour wait to purchase whatever we wanted. If my daughter or wife had found anything they wanted to make our wait in line worth it, I would have sucked it up and bought; however, the vultures had all ready picked over what they wanted. The wait just wasn't worth it.

Like I stated, I am not a Border's person. I don't appreciate their business practices, and prefer to frequent smaller local businesses; in addition, Borders is on the wrong side of town for me. If I choose to patron a big box store, Barnes & Nobles is much closer for me. I am sad though, as my community of Anchorage AK is small enough that the closing of a retail store such as Borders is a real kick in the family jewels. So while I will not personally miss Borders, I mourn for those that are now out of a job.

Game on!

Mini Review of Plundered Vaults and Report on Sessions 3 & 4 (WFRP)

2011-02-21T11:57:00.001-09:00

One of my players all ready posted a report of session 3, but I wanted to add my own short report of that session and session 4 in preparation of session 5 tomorrow night and as a mini-review of the adventure and book it is found in itself.

I've been running my players through an adventure called "Sing for Your Supper" which is included in the book Plundered Vaults which you can read about here.

The book includes 3 reprints:"Rough Night at the Three Feathers", "Grapes of Wrath" and "The Haunting Horror"; and three new adventures: "For Love of Money", "Carrion Call" and the adventure at hand, "Sing for Your Supper".

Before I get to "Sing" I will say a few short words about the book itself. When it was first published in 2005 by Black Industries, it represented exactly what I had hoped for in a second edition of WFRP. When Hogshead (hereby designated "HH") stopped publishing the first edition of the game, fans such as myself were left in hiatus. HH had promised reprints of many long out of print Games Workshops titles. I was eager to buy, read and play a promised revision of the final chapter of the Enemy Within Campaign. The original "Empire in Flames", I have never owned, read nor played, but from what I've gathered, it was a flopping disappointed. I had managed by haunting my local game store and shopping online, to acquire most of the original first edition books; however, a few always alluded me. "Empire in Flames" and "The Restless Dead" were two of the few I have not yet managed to acquire. For the most part, I've given up on finding those books I've missed. The Doomstones Campaign never held much interest for me and the uber hard to find Realm of Chaos titles are too expensive for my purse.

Plundered Vaults was an early publication in the new line up. It included two scenarios from The Restless Dead, two adventures I did not own, and three new adventures. It seemed things were of to a good start. Black Industries was doing as promised. They were bringing back some hard to find older materials and publishing new material to boot. To their credit, before 2nd edition went "tits up" this promise was mostly carried out; however, a revision of "Empire in Flames" went, well, up in flames (pun intended). Now, with 3rd edition being published by Fantasy Flight Games, it is once again in doubt that an official revision to the seminal conclusion of TEW will ever see light. Three is a wonderful fan created re-imagining available by the golden pen worthy MadAlfred available for download here (I discourage my players from downloading and reading it).

I chose to open my campaign with "Sing for Your Supper" because it offered my favorite style of WFRP adventure which includes investigation, creeping doom and just the right mixture of combat. Written by Nathan Greavey, "Sing" is not a perfect adventure. While it does not necessarily depend upon players being led by their noses, it does make a few leaps in faith that players WILL follow up on sometimes obscure leads. I anticipated this ahead of time, and was able to fill in the blanks by making things jive on the fly. This didn't bother me for as GM, I welcome this opportunity. It did do exactly what I wanted. It served as a nice introduction to the flavor of the city of Nuln and despite a few false starts and a bit of moving things along on my part, it was a good investigation adventure. I added a bit more combat then was originally called for, but I did this by choice to knock the dust off the WFRP percentile dice. Now I will address the sessions themselves.

Session 4 was a different beast. We were up to what I now consider full-force, our out of town player was able to Skype in. As a group, they quickly followed up on loose ends from session 3 which launched them into the final confrontation with the adventure's villain, Emil Stark. This final confrontation involved confronting Emil himself, whom they killed, and encountering two beasts of chaos, the poor missing daughter of the butcher Herr Fleischer and a missing noble rake named Rudi who had also been horribly mutated.

In the end, despite the fact that the girl and her father were given the final mercy by Shallyan Priests, they received their promised reward of 25 gold crowns, quite a small fortune. Gottfried, our initiate of Sigmar, received a critical wound to the left hand. No doubt, they will spend part of session 5 learning the fate of Gottfried - it is not known at this point if he will be able to keep his hand -and spending some of their new found wealth. After this, I will launch them into an entirely different style of adventure.

Good Mood, Good Blogs, Frank Cho Art

2011-02-19T11:18:00.000-09:00

I'm in a great mood today, and great moods put me in the mood to seek and share great art. I've mentioned my liking of Frank Cho's art before. I came across this gem at a blog that I enjoy called Shanna the She-Devil, which pointed me in the direction of Cavegirls in Fur Bikinis! Check out both of these blogs, if you - like me- enjoy jungle adventure tales featuring scantily clad women.

This particular Cho piece is an obvious homage to the old Coppertone Sun tan lotion baby adds.

In short, it is a delicious piece of Cho good-girl art. Enjoy, I hope your day goes as well as mine.

Game on!

Appendix N: Leigh Brackett's "The Ginger Star"

2011-02-15T15:24:00.000-09:00

One thing I've noticed since my previous post about Leigh Brackett, is the more I read her, the more I like her. That is true of the first book I read by her in the Planet Stories line. Of the two stories in that book, I enjoyed the first, "The Secret of Sinharat", but I liked the second, "People of the Talisman", more.

The Ginger Star is another John Eric Stark story. Originally published in 1974, The Ginger Star would be Brackett's return to the character of Stark after a nearly twenty years. As I mentioned in my review of The Secret of Sinharat, that book, published in 1964 was a re-write of two earlier short stories, both of which were published in the late 40's and early 50's. In the three previous Stark stories, Brackett had adapted the typical 40's Space Opera milieu which assumed that there was indigenous life in our solar system other then our own. Many authors other then Brackett had assumed as much about Mars, Mercury and Venus. With Brackett's return to Stark, she abandoned that curio of the golden age and created a new planet with Skaith.

It is because of Skaith that The Ginger Star so easily finds its place on Gygax's Appendix N. It is stuffed full of action and exotic locals. Several times while reading it, I kept finding myself tempted to stop and start building a campaign world around Skaith. So many things in this novel fired my imagination - The Corn King, the Farers, the Wandsmen. I won't ruin it for you by explaining what these things are, just please trust me. If you haven't ever experienced this novel, pick up a copy from Paizo and do so.

There are some weaknesses in this novel. Brackett does not take the time to develop here characters in this story. Most seem card board cut outs meant to stand in just long enough to push forward her plot. That criticism aside, she does deliver a fast paced story in less then 200 pages and while her secondary characters are not well developed, her main character is engaging. I think of Stark as a blending of Edgar Rice Burrough's Tarzan (and in some respects, John Carter) and Robert E. Howard's Conan.

I enjoy the Planet Stories selections that I've purchased from Paizo. I have not yet had the opportunity to read all of them - I have two more Henry Kuttner volumes to read, a collection of earlier stories written by contemporary authors titled Before they Were Giants and a double feature of Michael Moorcock and Joe Lansdale. Each book has attractive well done cover art, plus the covers are pre-creased (something I really appreciate). The paper used is of good stock that will not fade easily. Paizo has also sought out some great talent to write their introductions. I have one very glaring criticism: TYPOS! The Ginger Star featured the most annoying typo yet, as the copy editors had the characters stabling their "breasts" instead of their "beasts".

To steal a line from one of my favorite NFL pre-game shows: COME ON MAN!

Such glaring typos detract from an otherwise great product and I would love to see future products missing such errors.

The Enemy Within Session 3 Report (WFRP) - Willow's Journal

2011-02-10T15:44:00.000-09:00

I wish I could claim that I painted this well done mini, but I didn't. You can find out who did here (plus see some other great stuff!).

The following journal entry is also not by me, but by Willow's player.

Dear Mother and Father,

It has been almost two weeks since I arrived in Nuln and I am still wondering why, exactly, I came. I know I need to make some coin to help pay off the farm debts, but things here are very different to home. Streets paved with gold? They’re even more covered in muck than the roads in our village!

On the boat I sort of fell in with some fellow fortune-seekers. I don’t have much in common with them aside from that fact, but there’s no one here I know, and it’s already proven to be a good idea to have people at my back. Right off the boat we fell into a bad crowd when a cowardly scum-faced beggar led us into an ambush instead of to the decent inn he advertised… I am well now, but I had to spend a lot of my savings on a healer. Fortunately, my compatriots had the decency to help me out, and we’re sticking together, at least for now.

We’ve found a decent inn, but steady, good paying work is proving hard to find, and Bill’s lodgings and food, as well as mine, are eating into my coin. Still, today we were offered a job and given an advance, with the promise of more if we complete our job successfully. Things are starting to look up. We also met a nice elderly lady who helped us get into a restaurant we were investigating (We’re making an investigation! It’s just like the stories!), though the cost of the meal nearly bankrupted us again. Still, it was a nice change to eat decent food again. I miss your cooking, Da.

That’s all there is to tell for now… I am well, and so is Bill. I miss you, but with luck I’ll be able to send home a little coin soon, and maybe, in a few months, come back home for good.

Give my love to the cousins.

Your devoted daughter,

Willow

The Enemy Within Session 2 Report (WFRP) - Gottfried's Journal

2011-02-10T15:25:00.000-09:00

The following report of session 2, which I previously entered, is written by one of my players from his character's POV.

By the light of Sigmar, and all that is holy, this is a dirty city! Even the people coming into "The Rest", where I have been staying smell of the sewers.

I have spent several days attempting to convince Eponaia, a stout member of the Elvish Folk, about the goodness that is Sigmar. He will require more convincing of the light of Sigmar, but I am sure he will come around.

This evening, two of the ones smelling of sewer came in, and got themselves into what I suspected would be a bit more trouble than they bargianed for. I observed the fellow the smelly one had been talking to passing money around to others who then followed him out.

Suspecting foul play, and having that sense of guilt over the traveler I met on the road to Nuln on my conscious, I went to the back door to warn the smelly one that he was about to be in for more company than he bargianed for.

As the fellow with the coins and friends came about, one of them ordered me to close the back door, while they tussled. I bristled at this and pulled out my bow in responce to his crossbow pointed at my chest.

I had no choice, and opened fire, By the light of Sigmar it was in my mind the rider in the forest all over again.

The fight ended swiftly, some dead some run away.

Back in the Rest as we were drinking eating and Praying, I noticed a fellow twitching at his ear. When I got up to investigate him and his friend got up and ran out in a huff. I no sonner followed them out than I heard two thunks which turned out to be cross bow bolts in their neck and eye. Stripping them bare of their refinement we found purple hand tattoos on their shoulders. I thought this most strange, thus making note of it.

Upon our re entry once more into the Rest, a fellow came up saying how he liked the way we fought and handed out a card. By the Light of Sigmar, I know it was pompous of me, but I knew that my training at the temple in Reading and Writting would allow me to read this card, and I assumed the rest of them didn't know how to read.

"Herr Georg Fleischer", the card read complete with his address.

During the confusion about who and what the note was for and why, I became introduced to the smelly one, Bartolf, and his female companion Willow, and another man named Rickter, who smelled almost as bad as the smelly one.

They retired, to baths thank the Light of Sigmar, and I likewise retired to my sleeping area to pray and contemplate how the Light of Sigmar was guiding me.

Character Background (WFRP): Gottfried Oberholtzer

2011-02-10T15:20:00.000-09:00

The following is written not by me, but by one of my players.

I am Gottfried Oberholtzer. I am an initiate of Sigmar, Light be upon him. I came to be in the service of the Great Sigmar from my fathers poor farm about half way between Nuln and Strelssen along the River Aver. My parents were very religious, and very poor. I was urged to work the farm with my hands, and praise Sigmar with my heart. Eventually however I grew bored with helping my parents with the farm, and with their blessing I set out to become an Initiate of Sigmar. It would after all bring great blessings on my parents and family for their son, me, to become a priest of Sigmar.

All Journeys have their beginning, and this is mine. I traveled to Nuln on a whim, instead of Strelssen, I don't know why. As I traveled the road to Nuln, I decided to wander off the road, having seen a Hare which I thought would be good eating. Having chased the Hare some distance into the forest I came upon a dieing rider and his dead horse. He had been so badly hurt that he could not even speak. To my shame I thought to run away, but I could not bring myself to move. He had been attacked, or so it seemed, and he was beyond any help. As I leaned in he asked me to help him end his pain. By the light of Sigmar, I have told no other, I unsheathed my sword, and ran him through to end his suffering. I still feel shame that I took his bow, and the roll from his horse which had this complete set of leathers, and a small purse of gold, but it seemed a shame to waste them.

When I arrived in Nuln I found myself readily welcomed by the Priest of Sigmar as an Initiate. They prayed with me in the temple, and trained me in the Light of Sigmar. Yet I could not bring myself to tell them of the traveler I found n the road. I feel such shame and guilt that I do not know if I could ever tell another soul. I was sent forth by old priest who told me that I had to grow in my faith with Sigmar, cure the pain in my heart so that I could embrace Sigmar fully as His servant. I could have sworn that the Priest suspected but no one knows. Having been told to convert others to Sigmar and come back with more experience under my belt, I took up Sigmar's blessed hammer to make my way in the world hoping one day to return and be allowed to become a Priest.

This sorta disappointed me, I had expected... more. I didn't know what I would do at this point, and having no immediate plans or goals I set off for "The Fisherman's Rest". Having been on the river much as a younger boy, I thought I might find something familiar and comfortable here. Armed with my trusty Sword and Bow, my Leathers, and my faith in Sigmar, I have set forth to glorify Sigmar's name in the Empire.

Appendix N: Leigh Brackett's "The Secret of Sinharat and People of the Talisman"

2011-02-09T16:26:00.000-09:00

Born December 7, 1915 and passing away March 17, 1978, Leigh Brackett was an author of science fiction, hard-boiled crime fiction and she was a screen writer as well. It is her screen writing that most remember her for; particularly, she is remembered for writing the script for The Empire Strikes Back. That script was completed just prior to her death, and underwent heavy re-writing before the movie was made. A pirated version of her script is rumored to be floating around the web; however, I have never seen it.

Other then The Empire Strikes Back, she also screen wrote The Big Sleep (1945, co-written with William Faulkner), Rio Bravo (1959) and The Long Goodbye (1973) amongst others.

It is not her screen writing that made Gary Gygax mention her in Appendix N; rather, it was her science fiction stories. I recently read The Secret of Sinharat and People of the Talisman. The edition I read was published by Paizo Publishing in 2007 as volume five of their Planet Stories imprint. The volume includes two stories: "The Secret of Sinharat" and "People of the Talisman". It includes an introduction by Michael Moorcock, who was a long time friend of Brackett and her husband Edmond Hamilton (her husband is credited by some as "the father of Space Opera", alongside E.E. 'Doc' Smith and he is well known for his "Captain Future" stories). The cover art is by Andrew Hou.

I've read a number of the Planet Stories volumes by such authors as C.L. Moore, Henry Kutner and Manly Wade Wellman; without exception, I've enjoyed them all. The good people at Paizo are on a mission to keep these classic authors in print, and I am supporting their efforts by maintaining a subscription with them. The name "Planet Stories" is meant to pay homage to the magazine of the same name that saw print from 1939 to 1955.

Like the other volumes I've read, I enjoyed this one as well. I did, however, note an increased number of copy-editing mistakes that unfortunately detracted from an otherwise greatly enjoyable reading experience.

As for the stories themselves, "The Secret of Sinharat" is a novella expanded from a short story titled "Queen of the Martian Catacombs" (originally published in Planet Stories Magazine in 1949) and "People of the Talisman" was expanded from an earlier story as well, "Black Amazon of Mars" (originally published in Planet Stories Magazine as well in 1951).

The stories in this volume are both Eric John Stark tales. Stark was her most popular creation. He is perhaps made a bit in the image of Burrough's John Carter with a dash of Howard's Conan. Stark is a hard-bitten mercenary for hire. His skin is baked dark by the harsh sun. He was born on Mercury where his parents died and he was raised by the Mercurian aborigines who gave him the name N'Chaka, meaning "the man without a tribe". Both "Secret" and "Talisman" could be classified as Planetary Romance, or possibly even Sword and Planet. Technology is present, but so are swords made of cold-hard steel.

After reading both of these tales, it is easy to see why Gygax recommended Brackett in Appendix N. Here are tales of harsh lands, false gods, lost civilizations and high adventure. It is worth noting that Gygax recommended all of Brackett's works. I am in the midst of reading The Ginger Star now (another Stark book), and will blog about that when I am finished.

In closing, this short book serves well as an introduction to Brackett and her character Eric John Stark. If you enjoy Edgar Rice Burroughs and Robert E. Howard, you won't be disappointed.

In Remembrance of Lin Carter

2011-02-07T19:10:00.000-09:00

On this day, in the year 1988, Linwood Vrooman Carter, creator of tales of science fiction, fantasy and sword & sorcery, died after a battle with cancer.

Some revile Lin Carter. It is said that his fiction was little better than amateur fan fiction. Critics panned him as an imitator. Indeed, he stated himself several times that he was an imitator of the authors he loved; most notably, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Robert E. Howard, Lord Dunsany and H.P. Lovecraft.

As an author, Carter never did write a great masterpiece. Instead, he wrote in quantity over quality. It is not for his writing that I remember him. I relish him as an editor. As an editor, he rescued many forgotten classics when he took the reigns of the Ballentine Adult Fantasy Series. Including precursors to the series proper and a couple of "post" additions to the series, Carter pushed nearly 80 volumes in the series to publication. This number included six anthologies and three studies of the fantasy genre. He brought many classics to the public eye, including E.R. Eddison, Mervyn Peak, Fletcher Pratt, Lord Dunsany, William Morris, James Branch Cabell, George MacDonald, Hannes Bok, Evangeline Walton and George Meredith, amongst others. As editor of the Ballentine series, he also helped launch the career of Katherine Kurtz.

He was a founding member of SAGA (the Swordsmen and Sorcerer's Guild of America) where his editorship, and contributions, to the series Flashing Swords! helped bring attention to sword and sorcery writers such as Michael Moorcock, Poul Anderson, Fritz Lieber, John Jakes, Andre Norton and Jack Vance. His partnership with L. Sprague de Camp on Conan pastiche helped fuel the fire that would rescue the works of Robert E. Howard from obscurity.

He was prone to self-promotion, opinionated and unoriginal; however, he gave more to the fan community then he ever took. That alone is worth remembering him for.

For My Players who cheered for the Packers....

2011-02-07T16:05:00.000-09:00

...you wake up, alone and naked in the Chaos Wastes of the Far North. You do have your trusty fruit knife with you, but no rations.

STEELERS! OH HELL YEAH!!

2011-02-05T20:43:00.000-09:00

I am so freaking ready for tomorrow. I am one of five Steelers fans attending the Superbowl Bash that I go to annually. I am ready take their hatred and represent.

HERE WE GO!

The Enemy Within: Session 2 (WFRP)

2011-02-05T19:57:00.000-09:00

A long work week, with after hours filled with unexpected house hold repairs have left me with little time for blogging; however, we did manage to squeeze in a second session of WFRP this past week.

We had one player from the previous session fall too ill to play, but we had two more players join in, one via Skype. Skype opens up new avenues for role playing. One long time member of my table retired this past year and moved out of state. We had tried Skyping him in before, but a slow connection made it impossible at the time. Now, armed with a faster connection speed, we were able to make it so.

Neither of the two players who joined in had an opportunity to make a character ahead of time, so our first hour and half was spent making characters for them while chatting. I didn't mind this, as I had not spoken with the player that was Skyping in a good long time. Our start was also delayed as our other player joining in was running late himself due to illness.

When all characters were complete, we started. Our party now stands at a strength of five: Bartolf (human male Protagonist), Gotfried (human male Initiate of Sigmar), Ildrial Eponaia (elven male Wizard's Apprentice) and Rickter (human male Marine). I kept things simple. With the time remaining alloted for gaming (about two and half hours), I had four goals:

1. Introduce Gotfried and Ildrial to the group while keeping Rickter involved (Ricter's player stayed home sick).

2. Let enough time pass for Willow to heal from her wounds suffered in session 1.

3. Introduce some future plot elements.

4. Get the players involved in the main plot.

All four goals were easily met. I started with goal 2. Following up on one of the notices found at the Reik's Platz in session one, Bartolf and Rickter took a job with the Nuln city watch repairing, replacing and dredging sewer grates. They stayed at this job for three days, earning a bit of coin and giving Willow enough time to heal her wounds.

The first goal was accomplished by having the characters all end up at the same inn for a night of drinking: The Fisherman's Rest, more commonly referred to as "The Rest". While there, two strangers dressed in the garb of middle class merchants, attempted to send secret signals to Bartolf. They seemed to believe he was someone else. This was observed by another stranger. A tall human male wearing a grey cloak. He seemed to make sure that no one could see his face by keeping his hood up. When the two strangers gave up on sending signals to Bartolf, they left with looks of confusion and disgust upon their faces. The characters decided to follow them out.

The two strangers realized they were being followed by the characters and took off at a dead run. They did not get far before the sounds of them being attacked were heard. When the characters caught up to them, they were both dead. One had a bolt through the neck, while the second had a bolt through the right eye. The bolts were from a hand crossbow. The characters tossed them for what they could find, even stripping them of their fine clothing. When they stripped them, they saw that both men had a half-dollar sized tattoo of a purple, right hand print upon their left shoulders.

They returned to the Rest where a bit of camaraderie was established by having a fellow protagonist challenge Bartolf to a brawl. Bartolf accepted and Gotfried and Ildrid noticed that Bartolf was not going to be met alone, and was walking into an ambush. They jumped into the fray to help, joined by Willow and Rickter. A short combat occurred with the characters walking away with an easy victory.

A very drunk merchant observed all of this and afterwards gave his card to Gotfried. He introduced himself as Herr Georg Fleischer. He stated that he had need of people with their skill sets and that they should visit him at his butcher shop the next day.

At the Earth's Core - film (1976)

2011-01-30T13:17:00.000-09:00

This B Cheese Science Fiction was a treat to watch. I just recently read ERB novels At the Earth's Core and Pellucidar, so I was anxious to watch this. After watching the 2009 A Princess of Mars, I was unsure as to what to hope for; however, the fact that ATEC stars Peter Cushing laid some of my fears to rest.

Released in 1976, it also stars Doug McClure and scream queen Caroline Munro.

I'll admit, I'm more forgiving of a movie made in this era. I want to see rubber monsters and cheesy set design. I crave it. Peter Cushing being in this one gave me high hopes, but I found I didn't really care for his portrayal of Dr. Abner Perry. Cushing spoke in a high nasally voice and presented the doctor as much more bumbling then I remembered him. However, Cushing did get off the best line of the movie: "You can't mesmerize me! I'm British!"

Doug McClure as David Innes was adequate, but was not how I visualized David Innes. McClure did two more ERB films with director Kevin Conner. The Land that Time Forgot preceded ATEC in 1975, andThe People that Time Forgot followed in 1977. For some reason, The People that Time Forgot is available on DVD, but "The Land" is not (there is however a 2009 remake

The best part of the movie, in my humble opinion, is Caroline Munro as Dia. Munro is known to Hammer Horror Film fans. She also starred in fantasy and science fiction movies in the 70's and 80's. She makes a delicious looking Dia.

The film follows the novel just well enough to be recognizable, but is just different enough to bother purists. Some of the more interesting portions of the novel, are not touched upon, such as the geography of Pellucidar. Many other things are rushed as well so as to pack in as much action in 92 minutes as possible.

I very much recommend this film. It has hilarious MST3K moments, and is just coherently "ERB" enough to be enjoyable.

Appendix N Birthdays: February

2011-01-30T12:57:00.000-09:00

These are the people that started it all. Without their imaginations, this hobby that we all love may never have been. When applicable, the date of their death is provided. Each month also features "Honourable Mentions". This section is composed of people not listed on Appendix N, but geeky cool, and/or inspiring in some nerdage fashion. It is also of course completely subjective and based upon my own opinion. Please notify me if I've missed anyone from Appendix N, made any errors, or if you feel someone should be added to the Honourable Mentions column and please tell me why they should be added.

I've added a new category this month: "Hot Geek Crush of the Month". Necessary you ask? No, but it is another excuse for me to post pictures of lovely women.

Appendix N:

February 17: Andre Norton (1912/D. March 17, 2005)

February 17: Margaret St. Clair (1911/D. November 22, 1995)

February 24 :August Derleth (1909/D. July 4, 1971)

Honourable Mentions:

February 4: George A. Romero (1940, Master of Zombie flicks)

February 5: H.R. Giger (1940, famous painter)

February 5: William S. Burroughs (1914/D. August 2, 1997; Naked Lunch)

February 8: Jules Verne (1828/D. March 24, 1905; A Journey to the Center of the Earth)

February 10: Lon Chaney Jr. (1906/D. July 12, 1973; star of The Wolfman amongst others)

February 11: Leslie Nielson (1926/D. November 28, 2010; Forbidden Planet)

February 16: LeVar Burton (1957; Star Trek: The Next Generation)

February 25: Sean Astin (1971; played Samwise Gamgee in The Lord of the Rings)

Hot Geek Crush of the Month:

February 21: Jennifer Love Hewitt (1979).

Okay, being the star of Ghost Whisperer just nominally qualifies her, but damn have I ever got a geek crush on her!

Robert E. Howard's Savage Sword #1 - Dark Horse Comics

2011-01-29T19:33:00.000-09:00

It took me a long time to get my hands on this magazine. I was out of town the week it was published in December. I ordered a copy on-line and finally received it today.

REHSS, is meant to be reminiscent of the sprawling black and white Savage Sword of Conan magazines published by Marvel in the day. I was in fact disappointed when I read the previews of this issue and learned that it would be in color. Those disappointments are lain to rest.

I can't heap praise upon this book, but I really wanted to. Don't get me wrong, while I believe the price of all comics is too high, with the 80 pages of this particular one and a price tag of $7.99, it weighs in at just under .80 a page.

It is not a Conan cash cow for Dark Horse. There is a Conan tale in the first issue, actually the first part of a three parter, and I would be shocked if there wasn't Conan tale in each issue, but the Cimmerian is not all that is offered.

In issue one, the reader is given a Conan tale, a John Silent story (actually, this is kind of a sequel to Dark Horse Comics Solomon Kane: The Castle of the Devil), a Dark Agnes story, an El Borak text piece, and a Bran Mac Morn story.

The Conan story is written by Paul Tobin, illustrated by Wellington Alves. It takes place when the Cimmerian was a young thief. At ten pages, it moves fast and is part one of a three part tale.

Next up is John Silent. This tale is well written and self-contained. The art is engaging.

The text piece about El Borak is more of a teaser for issue 2 which will feature Francis X. Gordon in his first comics appearance with art by Tim Bradstreet.

Part one of a two part Dark Agnes story is next. This was the weak link of the book, but was not terrible.

Worm of the Earth is an adaption of a Bran Mac Morn story of the same name. The script is by Roy Thomas and the art is Barry Windsor-Smith. This is a reprint and makes up the bulk of the book (37 of 80 pages). This was a treat and worth the price of admission alone. Please Dark Horse, more of stuff like this.

All in all, very well done. I would have liked it to have been magazine sized and in black and white, but those gripes aside, this was great.

So I went to a fight and a hockey game broke out...

2011-01-29T10:39:00.001-09:00

As the saying goes, last night it was very true. I've been an Anchorage Aces fan for about 10 years now. I'll admit, I knew very little about hockey until I moved to a hockey town. Now, it rivals football for my sports viewing pleasure. I watch NHL as well, but my favourite venue for watching hockey is live with my very own Anchorage Aces.

The Aces are a minor league team and are members of the ECHL (Eastern Conference Hockey League). Our biggest rivalry is with the Bakersfield Condors, and that is who we played last night, and tonight and tomorrow night.

Whenever we face the Condors, it is a guaranteed grudge match. Last night was no exception to the rule; actually, I take that back as there were an exceptional number of fights. In the end we won with a pulse pounding, edge of your seat, screaming your lungs out score of 5 to 4.

As soon as the clock hit zero at the end of third period, a massive bench clearing brawl broke out that lasted at least three minutes. The refs even received a couple pot shots, and gave a few themselves. Hell, one of the Condors even tried to call out the Aces' coach onto the ice!

I'm not sure what the fall out will be, but I wish I could be there to see it tonight; however, I have a fund raising function to go to for a dear friend whose life we are trying to save.

The NFL Probowl means nothing to me, but game three of Aces vs Condors, well, I can't wait!

GO ACES!

CONDORS SUCK!

The Enemy Within: Session 1

2011-01-27T19:26:00.000-09:00

Two weeks ago we had our first WFRP session. We are playing Warhammer Fantasy Role Play Second edition. While I am using the second edition rules, I typically ignore the Storm of Chaos element that is embedded within the edition.

For those that do not know, when the second edition was released, it was done so with an advancement in the time line of approximatively 12 years later then that provided in the first edition. During those 12 years, the Old World was nearly overrun by a Chaos Hoard from the north. Accept for my first time running second edition, I typically ignore this timeline advancement and have chosen to do so with this campaign as well.

This will be the classic WFRP Enemy Within Campaign. Almost all of my WFRP campaigns are set within the EW, or at least in some hybrid form. Three of the current members of the group have experienced elements from Death on the Reik , but have never played Shadows over Bogenhafen. We may have one more player Skype in for the game, and he has played SoB before, but I can trust him not to ruin it for the others. We have a fourth player that has never played WFRP in any fashion as well. With this in mind, I will be playing them through SoB, and an abbreviated version of DotR before launching into The Power Behind the Throne and beyond. I did choose however, not to start them with SoB, but something else. If all follows my nefarious plan, the characters should be in their third careerer, or close to it, by the time we play tPBtT.

We had one missing player of our typical four, but that was okay as I was expecting a slow start. We spent half the session making characters. When characters were completed, I started the characters out on a river barge destined for Nuln. I had considered before hand playing out the river barge journey, utilizing part of DotR along the way, but decided against it and brought them straight into Nuln.

I gave them a bit of flavor text so they could get a sense of what Nuln is like. To the best of my memory, I don't think I've ever portrayed Nuln to this particular group. I tried to give them a sense of how important the Gunnery School is to the populace. Also, Nuln was one time the capital of the Empire. With this sense of past pride, the nobles and noble-wanna-bees of the city are very fashion sensitive. The latest fad in Nuln to date are exaggerated and extravagant cod pieces.

By the time they made their way off the river barge, it was late and drizzling rain. The characters were seeking shelter and not having much success. A beggar offered to lead them to an inn where he was sure he could find lodging for them if "the g'zz 'im a couple shillins". They were not surprised when he led them into an ambush.

Since we had one player who has never played WFRP in any form before, and for the benefit of all as it's been a while for the old guard in the group, I had decided to have a combat early in the session to warm up the dice. I placed them against four thugs and didn't expect them to have too much trouble with them. Also, a TPK (Total Party Kill) had abruptly ended our Tunnels & Trolls campaign, so I was not inclined to make it difficult. I did decide to keep my dice rolls in the open though, as I still believe in letting the dice fall where they may.

They did win the combat, but I was a bit surprised that one player ended the combat with 1 wound point left and another with only 4. In WFRP terms, this meant that the player with only 1 wound remaining was heavily wounded and could only heal one wound point per week without the benefit of a physician. With a physician, she can earn one wound point per day maximum. When she reaches four wound points, she can then either heal one wound point per day, or visit a physician and heal 1d10 per healing session. In short, she was not in good shape.

After the combat, they did not have any more luck finding an inn. They did find one with lodging available; however, a mishap with the door and the an extortionist inn keep convinced them to not stay there. They were lucky enough to have a town watchman take pity upon them. He allowed them to stay the night in a cell and even fed them a meager prison breakfast of gruel in the morning. He suggested to them that they may be able to find work at the Reik Platz. At the Reik Platz, there is a tree where job notices are posted. They would, he warned them, have to find different lodging for the night.

They thanked him and set out on their way. The first found lodging, then after asking directions, found a physician. There visit to the physician went well for them. Only the heavily wounded character is still injured. After paying the physician, the still wounded character, a female hobbit, went back to the room to rest. The other two players, a male human Protagonist and a male human Marine went to the Reik Platz to seek work. They found four possible leads for jobs posted at the tree.

That is where we ended the session. Not much was accomplished and most of the night was spent with me spouting flavor description to them to illustrate Nuln and the Old World to them. I was surprised by the level of carnage reached during the combat, but in the end I was pleased as it showed very well, especially to our new player, just how deadly combat can be in WFRP.

I'm handling experience very ad-hoc. I am simply awarding 25 xp per each hour of real time played. Our average session length is 3 hours. I'm offering a 25 xp bonus for a short session report, which if I get any, will be posted here.

We didn't play this past week, but hope to next week.

STEELERS! HELL YEAH! A celebration with pictures of hot babes.

2011-01-23T18:07:00.000-09:00

What a day! My Steelers are going to the Superbowl to take on the Packers. Heck, I even won $50 on a bet with a co-worker that the Packers would beat the Bears.

In celebration, and for absolutely no good reason, I'm posting pictures of lovely women with Steelers attire on.

GO STEELERS!

2011-01-23T10:36:00.001-09:00

Notice, all geeky related fun will be put on hold for me today as I watch my Steelers tackle the Jets. If this goes poorly, I may be too drunk to post later as I'll be drowning my sorrows with copious amounts of Pyramid IPA. Later.

The Savage Sword of Conan Volume 1

2011-01-22T12:18:00.000-09:00

Today being the 105th anniversary of the birth of Robert E. Howard, put me in the mood to review an item that I read many months ago: The Savage Sword of Conan Volume 1. This 544 page book is published by Dark Horse Comics and reprints The Savage Tales of Conan the Barbarian #'s 1-5 and The Savage Sword of Conan #'s 1-10. Both were black and white magazine sized comics originally published by Marvel Comics beginning in August 1973, tSToC, and August 1974 for tSSoC.

This isn't new, I know, again I am late for the bus, I believe at this present time Dark Horse is now up to volume 9 of the series. They intend to reprint all issues of The Savage Sword of Conan. Being a comics guy, I did know of these when they first came out, and I did buy volumes 1 and 2 when they were published; however, I did not take the time to read volume 1 until nearly a year ago, and I have not yet read volume 2.

This isn't from a lack of love for the series, as a teenager, I bought as many issues of Savage Sword as I could get my hands on. I spent much time in art class practicing my skills at drawing Conan while using Savage Sword as a model. I fully intend to buy all the volumes, but I'm slow to the party.

There are many remarkable things about the stories reprinted in the book. I could rave about the Roy Thomas scripts or go on about the art of Barry Windsor-Smith, John Buscema, Jim Starlin or Alex Nino, amongst others; however, that has been done elsewhere.

I will write briefly of the story reprinted from Savage Sword #6 "The People of the Dark". It is from a story of the same name originally written by Robert E. Howard. The original incarnation of the story was first published in Strange Tales of Mystery and Terror, June 1932 (found here via the Creative Commons Attributions/Share Alike Licence). It was not a Conan story. There was a character named Conan the reaver in the story, but he was Gaelic, not Cimmerian. Roy Thomas adapted the story by REH, and in his version, it is transformed into a Conan story. Many, including myself, believe the Conan of this story was catalyst or earlier incarnation of the Conan first read in "The Phoenix on the Sword" (Weird Tales December 1932--which in turn was a rewrite of a rejected Kull story "By this Axe I Rule!", May 1929).

The art for Roy Thomas script is done by Alex Nino. Nino at the time had drawn for Marvel before, but would hit his stride with black and white horror comics: Creepy, Eerie, Vampirella and later Heavy Metal. Being a regular reader of Dark Horse Presents, I am passingly familiar with his work there as well.

"The People of the Dark" is a past-lives story and in both REH's original tale and in the Roy Thomas script, it is told in first person narrative by the protagonist John O'Brien. During the course of the story, John O'Brien is on a quest to kill another man whom he is competing with for the affections of a lover. He is rendered unconscious and has a dream memory of an earlier life in which he was Conan. In REH's version, this is not the same Conan known in popular culture, in Thomas' script, it is the very same.

In both versions of the story, REH's views on barbarism vs. civilization are apparent, plus I came away with a social commentary (or perhaps better stated as a social influence) of evolution. The Children of the Night/Little People/reptile like humanoids of the story are explained as perhaps an earlier incarnation of homo-sapiens that faltered and failed. Howard no doubt was aware of Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species.

The Conan of the story, regardless of which version is read, can not be colored as a hero at on-set. He is seeking to kill another man over a woman that he seeks as a prize. There is a moment of redemption at stories end that does allow him to be viewed in a more heroic manner.

In summary, it was interesting to read both versions of the story and do a comparison. It is also nice to read a Howard tale upon this day of his birth and still enjoy it 78 years after inception to still find it enjoyable and relevant.

In Remembrance of Robert E. Howard

2011-01-22T08:03:00.000-09:00

Because there is nothing original I can say of Robert E. Howard on the day of his birth...I've read a number of great posts about Howard today...I will post one of my favorite Frank Frazetta paintings. I first encountered this image on the cover of Red Nails edited by Karl Wagner. Enjoy.

ERB - Frank Frazetta Art

2011-01-20T19:21:00.000-09:00

I just finished reading the first three Barsoom novels. It put me in the mood to showcase some ERB inspired art by one of my favorite fantastical artists, Mr. Frank Frazetta.

Richard Corben's Den Comics

2011-01-20T15:38:00.000-09:00

In December of 2010, I did a mini-review of the 1981 animated feature Heavy Metal. In that review, I mentioned that I liked the feature "Den" about a scrawny nerd that gets whisked away to a far-away planet, in the process the said scrawny nerd, Dan, is transformed into the uber muscular Den.

What I didn't realize at the time was the history behind that story. The short is based upon underground comics great Richard Corben. I've encountered Corben's work before. While I'm not a big fan of Heavy Metal magazine, and I'm just not cool enough to get into the underground comics scene on the ground floor (I'm always late to the party on the good stuff), I've seen his work in Dark Horse's Alien comics, DC's Hellblazer, and in other mainstream circles. While I am not a Dan Corben fanatic, I like his work.

His "Den" stories have an interesting publication background. It all started when he produced a short animated movie called Neverwhere. From there the story moved to Metal Hurlant (a French comics magazine that the American Heavy Metal was patterned after). Stateside, it continued in Heavy Metal magazine, from there mostly into Corben's own independent company Fantagor.

the Den stories take place on an alien planet called Neverwhere (where apparently clothes have not yet been invented) and are described as a cross between Edgar Rice Burrough's "Barsoom" stories and Robert E. Howard's Conan stories. I am a fan of both. What really intrigues me is Corben does not skirt the inherent sexiness of stories in that vein. For instance, it is easily forgotten that ERB often portrays the women of his stories as either nude or nearly so. This happens often in REH tales as well. Corben's Den stories are known for there full frontal nudity art. Perhaps my favorite description is "Conan on Viagra" (this being a reference to the fact that Den and many of Corben's male portrayals are well endowed--indeed).

Call me a pervert if you will, but I think it is undeniable that one of the reasons I really enjoy the stories of Burroughs and Howard is for their latent sexuality. The Den stories, from what I've been able to view on the internet and read about elsewhere, put sex in the forefront. This is outright in the "Den" segment of the Heavy Metal movie.

Granted, Corben has been criticized for his overly busty portrayal of women and for the fact that they serve as sexual fantasy fulfillment in his stories. My only defense to this is he is writing escapism. I like escapism. One important part of escapism, for me at least, is fantasy fulfillment. I want to be as brave as John Carter, I want to be as cunning as Conan and while it might cause stares in the locker room, well to be as well-endowed as Den might open a whole new career for me. Sex plays a role in my enjoyment of escapism as well. I have posted art of Dejah Thoris on this blog before, why? I'm attracted to the idea of her. In a ERB story, a princess is lovely, desirable and always needs rescue. Macho? Sure, but again, this is escapism.

I can't say Richard Corben's "Den" stories are high art, as I've never read them, but I would be eager to do so. A quick search on ebay today shows that might be an expensive venture.

Steelers BABY!

2011-01-17T17:46:00.000-09:00

I had big plans of getting at least three blog posts up this weekend, the second in my series on Lin Carter and a couple of reviews; however, the playoffs ate up most of my time, alongside unexpected house repairs. I have been re-reading much Warhammer material, I'm sure there will be something on that soon, as session one will be this Tuesday.

Game on, and GO STEELERS! BREAK THE JETS ALL THE WAY TO THE SUPERBOWL BABY!

Frank Cho Dejah Thoris Sculpture

2011-01-14T14:29:00.000-09:00

Feast your eyes on this piece of art. Wow! I dig it. Two of my favorite things: Dejah Thoris, who I've had a crush on since I was 10, and the art work of Frank Cho.

I've been a big fan of Frank Cho ever since discovering Liberty Meadows. His pin-up girl art work is in one word, lustful.

Warlord of Mars - Dynamite Comics

2011-01-14T12:32:00.001-09:00

Ever since I was a kid, I've always been excited about my favorite things being adapted to comics. I read Marvel Comics Star Wars, but what I always looked forward to were the movies being serialized in comic format. As a geek, comic books are my first love, followed closely by great science fiction (at least great by my standards), and last comes role playing games and board games (both forms of gaming are neck and neck for me). So to have one of my favorite science fiction tales be adapted to comic book format, and done so well, is fabulous for me.

I have not, as of yet, gotten my hands on the Dark Horse reprints of Marvel Comics 1970's adaption of Burroughs John Carter tales, but I will soon. I get free Amazon bucks from my company corporate card, so I'm waiting for enough points to build to grab some from swag.

Dynamite's series is written by Arvid Nelson, best known for his work on Dark Horse Comic's Rex Mundi. and illustrated by Stephen Sadowski, who has done work for Malibu, DC, Dark Horse and Marvel. Each issue features four different covers.

Thus far, the series is an adaption of A Princess of Mars; however, a few liberties are taken with John Carter's adventures out west on earth. Issues 1 and 2 begin with Captain John Carter on earth trying to make his living by searching for gold. This is after the end of the Civil War. Nothing is changed in that regards. Dynamite did not choose to modernize the tale as was done with the direct to video movie of Princess of Mars. The two issues are split evenly between that tale and a new tale of how Tars Tarkas gained his second name.

Not everyone will be pleased with Dynamite's adaption. I've all ready read some complaints on forums and a few negative reviews, but thus far, after reading issues 1 to 3, I am enjoying them and I believe you might too. It doesn't hurt that issue one is only $1. I picked up issues 2 and 3 from my local comic shop at cover price.

Issue 3 has John Carter arriving on Barsoom, and there begins a more traditional adaption of the story.

I have not yet had the pleasure of finding a copy of Dejah Thoris #1, but I post the cover here for your viewing pleasure. It is, in my not so humble opinion, a very flattering view.

Heading North

2011-01-12T07:21:00.000-09:00

I'm heading home from Juneau to Anchorage this evening. I've been pecking away at Part 2 of my series of posts about Lin Carter . It has grown too large. One of my goals for this year is to become a better blogger. I'm aiming for short posts that the reader would want to take the time to read. Myself, as a regular blog reader, I have a tendency to at best skim the larger posts rather then reading them. I prefer short posts that inform me and/or get me thinking. A post that makes me smile isn't turned down either.

Therefore, I'll be re-thinking and re-writing my second post in the series, so it may be some time before it appears here.

Happy Gaming.

This week's most viewed post

2011-01-11T07:22:00.000-09:00

I find it amusing that my most viewed post for this week thus far is my Amazing Late Night Drunk Post inspired by too much Saki and beer. Perhaps I should always blog drunk.