Back in '81

Unchained and out on the Mean Street(s) again.

2012-01-13T11:56:00.012-05:00

In the wake of some recent (mediocre) tuneage from the yet-again reunited VH/DLR combo, I feel the need to post the following old school masterpiece for your sonic pleasure:

Yep, another long delay between posts, and then on top of that it's another music-related post. I simply haven't gamed in quite some time, or really even dorked around with anything game-related (minis, modules, books, etc). Life: it is what it is. Maybe I should make it a point to bust out the old polys with my boy sometime during this extended weekend. Maybe? Nah. Definitely! As Chris Knight once declared...

"It's a moral imperative!"

Annnnnyway, this classic VH album was in heavy rotation on my boombox, back when I was first introduced to, IMO, the best version of D&D to ever grace the (border)lands: Moldvay's Basic box set.

Pure and utter coolness.

OK, wait a sec. This is starting to get kinda gaming-related; I better stop. LOL - Seriously, gotta go. Have a great one folks. Gonna listen to the jams, while I try to get through this seemingly never-ending Friday at work. Hopefully you'll have a dungeon crawl happening soon, and if so maybe you'll choose to have this amazing *record* as the soundtrack to your maniacal monster killin' and tempestuous treasure lootin'. It sure worked wonders for us back in '81.

They'd be so much cooler with some VH on the boombox.

'11 = '81: a music related post which you may or may not dig

2011-11-10T14:33:00.003-05:00

I don't usually post about music (which is weird, 'cuz it's a serious passion of mine), but today I felt like doing just that.

If you don't dig this kind of music, it's cool - you don't have to. But I like tons of different genres of music - from jazz to metal; soul to synthpop - and I sure do love me some old school synthpop.

These cats have been doing it for a lonnnnnnnng time, and it seems they are pretty much back in'81 with this new stuff. Which I like.

1981:

2011:

I decided to post the clean MTV version of "Girls on Film" simply because I don't know for sure the age range of the potential audience here, and the original (official) version gets pretty racy in some parts - and even shows boobies! Oh dear. Anyway, in an effort to keep it somewhat clean here, I went with the censored one. If you want to see the naughty parts, then you'll just have to get your Google-Fu on. It's out there. Or so I've heard. Word on the street. A friend of mine told me he saw it. LOL

Annnnnnnyway... Back in the day, when we rolled the polys on the dining room table, I will admit there really wasn't much Coltrane or Sam Cooke on the "tape player" (although I love them both). But there sure was plenty of Dio, Maiden, and AC/DC - mixed right in with some tracks by The Police, U2, and The Fixx. See our soundtrack was often MTV (or tuneage they would eventually play), and it was almost always on in the background. So along with those acts I just mentioned, you can bet there was a fair share of Duran Duran.

Now I could try to make it seem fitting, like say playing "Hungry Like the Wolf" during a Ravenloft session, or "Planet Earth" during some Gamma World or Star Frontiers. No? How about playing "New Religion" during a crawl through B4 - The Lost City? Still no? LOL - OK, I'll stop.

Although I don't personally know your musical tastes, I sure know mine. And I must say that IMO, new Duran² is pretty much old Duran². And that is pretty much good².

My 5 y.o. Daughter's Mixed Media Cthulhu

2011-11-08T09:34:00.007-05:00

Apparently R'lyeh is actually located in the deep end of our backyard pool. Who knew?

She said he was sad (note the tears) because the shark just bit his toes.

Should I be worried? Should I be proud? Or maybe both?

Regardless, I couldn't help but think of this AWESOME video gem I ran across on teh interwebz:

Maybe I should scale back on the Lovecraft bedtime stories. Hmmn....

"Now I lay me down to sleeeeeeeep..."

Nah.

Or should I not let her keep checking this out from the school library?

Required reading for DND101 - Intro to Sweetness and Badassedness.

I limited wish they allowed that. But again... Nah.

However, it just might be time to break out the dice & minis and the mat & markers again.

Yep!

BTW, I have to say this twisted... err... gifted artistic trait definitely runs in the family.

Wonder Wife, Aquadude, Taz, a dragon or something... oh, and that guy from KISS?

2011-11-01T22:30:00.013-04:00

IMO, Halloween is the coolest of all the holidays. So we usually live it up while it lasts. This year my wife decided to make use of a borrowed Wonder Woman costume (free = good). So, purposefully avoiding the typical Superman, Batman, and new to the fold this year (due to the film, of course), Green Lantern, I decided to try quite arguably the lamest Super Friend of them all... Aquadork.

Burrrrrrrrrnnn...!

Who'da thought it'd be so hard to find green tights?!? Jeesh! Anyone got a spare pair?

After some fiendish searching, I found a suitable replacement. A pair of green thermals at a Goodwill-ish store: $2... Sold! Two rows over, a too-short, nearly half-shirt, orange top: $3? Sure. Some funky belt up near the checkout: $1? OK. My daughters stuffed sea-horse toy: $0. Hey, I bought it to begin with, right? Oh, and a cardboard cutout uppercase "A" (And yes, I went with the actual letter, not just the more common "carrot sign" - as I figured some of the other party-goers might need all the help they could get).

Meanwhile, back at the Hall of Justice... Aquadude explains "Look WW, all we need are some tasty waves and a cool buzz, and we'll be fine."

And yes, my wife rocks - flat out RAWKS! So much so, that randomly throughout the night I found myself singing, "You're a wonder, Wonder Woman....!"

OK, now let's talk a second about the hair, shall we? Upon seeing this above nightmarish pose, a friend of mine declared it "reminds me of that show The Greatest American Hero. And it sure does. Doesn't it?

"No, I went like *this*."

See, I have 4 wigs (a meager collection, but hey, I'm working on it), and this was the closest one to Aquadweeb's hair. I like to think that it's sort of a beach-bum, surfer-dude version of the swimmingly.... uhm... swimmer. Now, I do have a much better nu-wave one, a mullet one, and a '70s David Cassidy type (also doubles as a pretty solid Han Solo 'do), but yeah, I guess The Greatest American Hero perm it was.

All in all, it was a successful Halloween par-tay, and I for one can admit that one of my oldest schoolboy fantasies finally came true. Come on fellas, don't tell me you watched Lynda Carter back in the '70s for the plots. Right?

"Up here, bud."

Okie doke, back to whatever it was I was talking about. Right, OK so our kiddos opted for some fun costumes this year too. Here we see "Taz" and either a dragon, a dinosaur, an alligator, or "Yoshi" - depending on which day you ask her. She was "Belle" (of Disney fame) for an earlier neighborhood party, but then decided to get her dragon on for the real deal. Like I was about to stop her.

Proposed cover art for a possible new RPG:
"Dust Devils & Dragons"

With the big night approaching, I needed to figure out what I was going to wear out with them when they went trick-or-treating. I didn't really want to don the Aquabro getup in the cold. I probably would've frozen my ... uhm... gills off!

So, as a last minute alternate costume, I threw together a bunch of previous Halloweens' crap and went with this look:

Juxtaposers.

I successfully frightened several small children, a few dogs, and even one grown man. And I'm fairly certain that a few folks had their eye on me, presuming I was some psycho child-stalker or something. But the craziest reaction was when several different neighborhood trick-or-treaters said, "Hey, it's the guy from KISS!" - Silly kids. So much to learn. Hopefully their folks' will let them watch VH-1 Classic someday.

The casket opens...

2011-10-20T19:29:00.007-04:00

It turns out, I'm still alive. But yeah... I guess it's been a little while, eh? I've simply been caught up in life's other stuff and things. Thought I'd pop in for a brief visit on the b-day of one of screen's old school boogie-men.

"The spider spinning his web for the unwary fly."

Happy Birthday to Bela Lugosi. Not the best actor, by any stretch of the imagination (nowhere near the chops of horror greats Cushing, Lee, Price, Rains, etc), but his portrayal of the Count in 1931's Dracula still creeps me out to this day. And I'm a grown man. Well, sorta.

So there it is, I guess kinda "back in '31." See ya soon.

"*Charmed*, I'm sure."

Apple. Tree. Close proximity fall. - Star Wars Christmas, vintage-style!

2010-12-25T23:24:00.005-05:00

Pretty sure I have a picture of me just like this 30 years ago, with the same present. Vintage Star Wars toys rock!

Grandma&Grandpa bought this one, along with a few figs. Of course, Santa brought some more SW figs and related gear too.

So far I think he has this Imperial Tie Fighter (above), Vader, Luke (Snowspeeder pilot version), Yoda, Darth Maul, Obi Wan (ep III-ish), a Clone Trooper (I could *swear* I told them Sandtrooper - ah well), C-3PO and R2.

Pretty sweet loot! Err.... I mean, for my son, that is. ;^]

Spandex isn't for everyone.

2010-12-14T14:39:00.007-05:00

Confident

Look, I love TRON as much as the next guy; well, maybe not as much as this guy; but c'mon now.

If you ever see me looking like that, and it's NOT Halloween... wait, scratch that... including Halloween, puh-leeeeze derez me!

Thank you, oh merciful MCP!

I don't feel too bad making that request, because I hope that this dude doesn't really take any of this too seriously. I mean he has to know that donning that outfit is gonna get some attention, both good and bad. And I have a feeling he loves the attention. Thus, it's alllllll goooooood.

And honestly I'm not saying it's really bad. OK, it's pretty bad, but still, it's a free country. Dude can wear anything he wants. And ya sure can't knock his spirit. Go TRON-dude!

Sure, I did "dress up" as Darth Vader this year, but it was Halloween, and it involved absolutely no spandex. I save my zebra-striped pants for '80s-themed parties. Hmmnnn... maybe I do look like this on occasion. Oh dear! Oh deaaaaarh!!!!!

Anyway, I know he's been popping-up all over teh interwebz, so I tried not to simply jump on the bandwagon, but I just couldn't help it.

Weirdest part in all of this: What's with the bag? Apparently you still have to pack your own lunch in a virtual world of 1s and 0s. Who would've thunk it. Then again ya never can tell who you might run into in the cafeteria, right?

end of line

Cheers, Borrrrrris!

2010-11-23T10:43:00.004-05:00

Happy b-day to one creeeeeeeeeepy dude.

If you have some free time (or free DVR space), check out TCM today for tons of Karloff flix (The Lost Patrol, The Walking Dead, West Of Shanghai, You'll Find Out, Isle Of The Dead, The Body Snatcher, Bedlam, Dick Tracy Meets Gruesome, The Terror).

Obviously a few of these have ...already played this morning, but maybe you can time-travel and you're just keeping it a secret from us all. Dunno.

Those Val Lewton (RKO) ones are some very cool films (Body Snatcher, Isle/Dead, Bedlam). Or pull out some classic Universal Frankenstein, Bride of Frankenstein, or The Mummy, if ya have them. Probably the most famous (mainstream) of his movies.

Kinda makes ya wanna dig up that old box of CHILL stuff, right? Who knows what else you might unearth...

pants = soiled

Oh BTW, HBD2 Sara Karloff (his daughter) too! Pretty cool dualie celebration, right there.

Super-cool birthday gifts... from back in '77

2010-11-18T22:33:00.005-05:00

I was diggin' through some old photo albums at my folks' house this week, and came across this snapshot in time:

I found several years of birthday pics, including some from back in '81, but this one really caught my eye, especially with some of that suh-weeeet vintage Star Wars swag.

Anyway, I thought I'd share a peek at some of those AWESOME b-day gifts from "a much simpler time."

So let's take stock. From left to right (sorta):

a Star Wars marker/coloring poster (with 3-D Vader mask, mind you!)
a Dallas Cowboys helmet lamp (I either put 12 or 33 on the back with stickers)
a set of 6 "silver" (ok, silver-colored) Hot Wheels cars (these I kept... they're my son's now)
an mpc R2-D2 *fully-articulated* model kit
a full set of all NFL teams pencils
an amt Cuckoo Nest Custom Ford Van model kit
an Obsession board game - "The game you can't get enough of!" (Dig that preposition-ending sentence. Nice grammar, babe!)
a Skorpion (advanced design street machine) model kit - I guess I got my share of sniffing glue back then, eh?

Sadly, no TSR loot. But then again, the earliest I really got into the likes of D&D, Gamma World and Top Secret was, well... back in '81.

Live a little, Chewie!

2010-11-17T17:45:00.008-05:00

"Gggggaaaarrrrrrrr!!!! Arrrrhhhn!!!!!"

Happy World Wide Wookiee Life Day!

November 17 - And it's my birthday, too. Sorry for the self-promotion - I'm just in a happy mood today, and proud to have made it through another year.

"Me? Old? Hhmmmm...? Think so, I do not."

At any rate, in Chewbacca's honor, tonight I think I'll dig out this old fella from back in '77 (actually, I didn't get mine until '78, IIRC), and school my son on the wonders of late '70s action figure articulation... all four points of it.

Veterans Rock!

2010-11-11T15:37:00.002-05:00

I did not serve. I never would've had the guts to do so. To those who did... and those who still do... every single one of you ROCK! Thank you so very much for our freedom.

/salute

A belated beheading. Plus a pac-o-lantern and some Darth Silliness

2010-11-05T15:37:00.012-04:00

I had the above pic set aside for a Halloween related blog post, but 10/31 came and went. Alas, here it is, several days late. Still, what an totally AWESOME work by the late, GREAT Frazetta. I absolutely LOVE his stuff; always have. I still run across works of his that I have never seen before. This was one of those. The image alone is so bad@$$, but the use of color in his art is just plain stunning. God, I wish I could draw/paint/*pastel* like that! Nobody even comes close, in my mind.

Since this is basically a post-Halloween post, I may as well cover a couple other items:

First, on the "back in '81" tip ('80, really, but who's counting?), my son (6 y.o.) wanted a Pac-Man pumpkin this year. It's nothing extravagant (not like some of those amazing carvings I've seen posted online), but about 3/4 of the way through, it started to get a little tricky. Ya see I almost blew out the whole thing when I carved away too much of the bottom half before punching out the ghosts' eyes. Doh! Anyway... it held up, and he really dug it... and that's truly all that matters.

"Waka-waka-waka..."

And finally, I also had a little too much fun out with the fam, as Darth Robbo, terroizin' y'alls neighborhood (hope this works - the video won't play in the *preview* pane - gives an ERROR):

Darth Neighbor
"I sense something; a presence I've not felt since... [burrrrrp]"

Note to self: Eating garlic-heavy lasagna for dinner and then heading out trick or-treating with the kiddos in a tightly-enclosed face-mask is NOT highly recommended.

"The circle is now complete. When I left you, I was but the learner; now *I* am the master-bathroom![sic]"

Truth be told, if I would have had this costume this year, you bet your bounty-hunter-butt that I would have worn it instead of that Target one I'm wearing above. Check out this life-like, near-movie-prop below from back in tha day (note, this is for the lesser-known, often-disregarded Darth Vadar):

The Dark Lord of the Sith's "fun poncho."

Disney Tarzan 'toons - now with more pulp

2010-10-07T13:30:00.019-04:00

What, like this???

No not like that. But still pretty pulpy. Allow me to explain:

See, when my 4 y.o. daughter is watching the DisneyXD channel, and The Legend of Tarzan cartoon comes on, I figure it's in her best interest that I watch it with her... ya'know, parental guidance and all.

Plus this episode, Tarzan and the Leopard Men Rebellion, is about Queen La, Leopard Men, and the Lost City of Opar. Cool! But, uhm, yeah... only watching for my lil' girl's sake. ;^]

Sure, it's not purist Tarzan - La is (sorta) clothed. Well, at least a tad more than in this Frazetta gem:

BTW, I'm not totally positive that even is La there, but it certainly is Frazetta and it absolutely makes me think of her nastiness... errr, *highness* when I see it. I originally was going to plop the more popular Tarzan Meets La of Opar by Frazetta right there, but I thought that there might be just a little too much "boobage" (let alone "pubeage") in it for a blog post that started out about watching kids' cartoons with my daughter. Ya dig? Cool.

Additionally, in this Disney 'toon, La's leopardmen are not really a cult (cannibalistic or other), per se...

... but actually leopard-men under her command. Well, maybe that sorta is a cult.. whatever. Let's just say, it's not exactly true to the novels, aiiight?

But... for a kids' show, it's still pretty freakin' cool, IMO. I usually try to scan the episode details for the week, and only DVR the ones that I think look like they might have a good pulpy storyline. After all, I gotta watch these things too, ya'know. LOL.

Anyway, this particular ep looked like it would be a good one to record, and indeed it was (again, IMO). I mean, come'on... A Lost City! Leopardmen!! La!!! She was pretty downright devious too, and dig that totally bad@$$ (and way overpowered) staff she wields... niiiiiiiiiice.

Anyway, here's the episode in 3 parts, in case you feel inclined to check it out:

So, although it's not exactly this:

... it's still pretty fun to watch... ya'know, for the sake of the children.

Old school horror flicks on TCM this month, starting... TONIGHT!

2010-10-01T16:49:00.009-04:00

DVR free space be damned! - TCM is showing some AWESOME old school horror flicks, every friday night this month (Oct).

Included in the deal are some of my favorite films from Hammer. Those Brits picked up the American Universal's torch and ran with it - after they formed an angry mob with the rest of the villagers and chased the monster to the old mill and burned it to the ground using said torch, that is.

Anyway, here's tonight's offerings (EST):

.8:00 PM....Horror of Dracula (1958)
.9:30 PM....The Brides Of Dracula (1960)
11:00 PM....Dracula, Prince of Darkness (1966)
12:45 AM....Dracula Has Risen From the Grave (1969)
.2:30 AM....Psychomania (1973)
.4:00 AM....Daughters of Satan (1972)

Anyway, if you dig the old horror, especially Hammer flicks with Peter Cushing, Christopher Lee, and the usual bevy of babes...

...then you'll wanna tune in or at least DVR/Tivo them (possibly never to actually watch them via those recordings, like me... sometimes ;^]).

Oh, BTW, I have quite a few of these already on DVD, especially most of tonight's selections, but some of them coming later this month are not very easy to find on DVD, or so it seems. The Reptile, for one, is up next week, and I have NEVER seen it. I'm totally GEEKED to finally get the chance.

Same deal with Plague of the Zombies.

OK, put a stake in me... I'm done.

"Aw, cripe!"

Bedrock as a sandbox? Or just a one-shot through Uncle Giggles' haunted house?

2010-09-30T11:32:00.014-04:00

First things, first: Happy 50th Anniversary to "the modern stone age family!"

Yep, 50 years, folks. Wow! Or maybe more relevant: "Yabbbbbba Dabbbbbbba Dooooooo!" Now, The Flintstones may not be totally RPG/D&D/etc-related, or even really Back in '81-ish (although I know for sure I was still watching them back then, everyday, after school, so we'll count it, right?

Having some fun with the Flintstones thing this morning I couldn't help but think about Bedrock as a place for a group of adventurers to discover, or even to roleplay the main characters through some sort of scenario. There certainly were many episodes where we got to enjoy the adventures of Fred & Barney. They were always getting themselves into some sort of trouble.

One in particular that makes me think RPG was the episode called "A Haunted House Is Not A Home." This creepy joint could make for some fun times in any sort of haunted house session - you pick the game/ruleset. I mean seriously, check out some of those traps to disable and dark rooms to explore. Also, dig that sweet "switchbladed" axe at the end of the clip - first it's a Hand Axe then it's a Battle Axe!

If that doesn't feel quite right, then maybe float the Lost World/Hollow World/Savage Worlds type of boat and either mix in the 'stones and some of their gadgets (i.e. artifacts?), or maybe just the setting of Bedrock itself. Sound crazy? Yeah. Stupid? Possibly. Fun? Who knows. I'd give it a whirl, just to find out. In fact maybe I'll have some Flintstones-inspired quick&EZ RPG fun with my kiddos later today. After all it is their anniversary, for Dino's sake!

Brand new old school pulp tales 2-in-1: "I'd buy that for a dollar!"

2010-09-27T14:40:00.016-04:00

Just a quickie here, because time is money... or money costs a lot of time... or ya can't buy good time for a nickel any more... or somethin' like that. Plus this little tale is actually about money... or at least not spending much of it.

Anyway, my family and I hit the Halloween shop yesterday (after lunch, after church) and right next door to it is a Dollar Tree store. So I made a quick stop to check the Star Wars action figs/cards/etc, 'cause sometimes they have some cool stuff in these joints.

Now, in case you don't have them in your area, or if you've never heard of them before, the Dollar Tree is just one of the myriad dollar-store chains that seem to be everywhere these days. This one in particular truly is "everything for a dollar" (not *everything* in one huge pile for only a dollar, but a dollar per item).

So... I check the toys section real quick (for my kiddos, of course, right?... yeah right - LOL) and see nothing really cool, so I turn back and take a gander in the books section. Now these are usually some pretttttttty sucky offerings, ranging from cheesy knockoffs of legit characters/stories/etc to self-help/diet books and the like. But I did see a couple sci-fi/fantasy covers and authors (Andre Norton, Glen Cook, etc) so I dug a little deeper in behind the mess on the shelf.

That's when I saw this bad boy:

Slaves of the Laughing Death/Satan's Murder Machines - Some nice family reading time material, right?

Yep, two original The Spider stories in one paperback novel sized book. Sa-weeeeeeeeet! Now I'm not a HUGE Spider fan, as I haven't had a ton of experience with these stories. I am, however, a very BIG fan of pulp in general, especially the oldschool '30s/'40s stuff like Doc Savage, The Avenger... even The Shadow. I have far too many of the Bantam Doc Savage reprints to list here (most of those I actually only paid $1 each for too, but that's not a deal I can pass along like this Dollar Tree one), a dozen or so of the Warner Avenger books, and a handful of the Shadow books as well. I also have a small selection of the Nostalgia Ventures/Sanctum Books pulp-style magazine reprints that came out not too long ago, mostly of Doc. But I only have one, single-solitary book/magazine reprint of The Spider, so this one I found yesterday was a rare gem to my cheap@$$ eyes. (We're talkin' Dollar Tree, remember?)

OK, back to this book: These are NOT the Pocket books rewritten/updated versions that came out in the '70s. Those had a whole new image and artwork, and new(er) cars/gadgets/etc. Don't get me wrong, I dig these types of Men's Adventure books/illos too, but when you're expecting a creepy '30s pulp dude, you don't really want to see a blonde Mack Bolan on the cover. Dig?

Yeah, *not* this.

As far as I can tell these are the original stories, just reprinted in the '90s as doubles, in novel paperback form, not pulpish, trade paperback/magazine form. Here it is at The Vintage Library. Browsing that site, it looks like I may have overpaid for this little tome. Some of these are FREE there. Doh! - Of course there's that little thing of the $7.95 shipping (not sure if that applies to free stuff, but I suspect it does). Yeah, I'll just stick with the Dollar Tree for now.

So of course I immediately (nearly) tore the place apart looking for more titles, as this is #6 in a series of these doubles, but sadly I didn't find any more. So I'll be hitting a few more locations near my home and near work, just in case there are any more treasures there just waiting for me to find. If you dig pulp, you may wish to do the same.

Now get 'yer hands off me booty!

"I was falsely accused of a hideous crime... yada-yada-yada..."

2010-09-09T16:34:00.015-04:00

Am I the only one getting totally GEEKED about the new (old) show Nikita? Maybe. Still, be it a remake, a reboot, a reimagining, or even just a regurgitation, I'm usually always a sucker for this crap.

Now, I will admit that there really isn't much "Back in '81"-ish about this show, BUT these types of shows and movies, when done right, can take me back to the days, somewhere in '81-'86, sitting with some buddies around a kitchen table, with this rulebook,

and these dice,

playing through modules like this (or a totally ad-lib'd one),

with slick, bad@$$ dudes and chicks like this:

See, I'm a HUGE fan of the late '90s (-early '00s) La Femme Nikita,

the original French film, subtitles and all,

and even the re...make with my girl Bridget (Point of No Return),

... so this new Nikita might be a total suckfest, but I just HAVE to give it a shot. Tonight at 9 (EST), on The CW... we'll see. OK, now I'd better get back to Section, before they decide to cancel me.

"OK, now these are the droids we're looking for." - retro Star Wars night with the kiddos

2010-08-25T13:03:00.016-04:00

OK, so I lied... a little. Way back in April, I noted that it had been since way back in November that I had blogged. I vowed to blog more, but I failed my save vs. (the_universe - this_blog). In other words, life has been so fun for me that I just haven't had much chance to get on here and talk about it.

See, I've been very busy with family stuff, especially since it has been the summer, and my kiddos and my wife were on summer break. That means lots of time spent doing cool, fun, kiddo things with them. This is a good thing, BTW.

Still, in keeping with some level of geekdadliness, I have continued to mix as much gaming, fantasy, sci-fi, etc as possible into many of our activities. So just recently I decided it was time (why did I wait so long?!?!?) to introduce my son to some real Star Wars. See, he started getting interested in the animated Clone Wars stuff, which is pretty sweet in its own right, but I wanted to make sure he experienced the really-REALLY cool stuff.

So I got out the "original theatrical version" DVD of the beloved '77 gem:

Yeah, yeah... I know... there are numerous "original" versions which have been released, and this DVD one certainly isn't exactly the way we saw it back in the day. But, as far as I know, it's the best we have as far as DVD format goes.

Because of this, and for better aspect-ratio purposes, I almost took 'em back to the VHS world. Maybe next time:

Certainly, it is pretty easy to fall into the trap of just watching the newer edited versions, which seem to be on SpikeTV every other week. However, my conscious just wouldn't be happy with that move. So we went back (pretty darn close) to the way I saw it, in a tiny two-screen cinema in my hometown, back in... err... '77.

You bet yer shaggy bantha-butt that my kiddos will know, without a doubt, that "Han shot first." Greedo's a punk!

Similar to good ol' Luke Starkiller... err, Skywalker, my son skipped right past that silly "Jedi Youngling" stage. Lame title, anyway.

Darth Bobby - "The circle is now complete."

RIP, Frank Frazetta... and soar.

2010-05-11T14:53:00.003-04:00

Simply amazing. My all-time fave fantasy/sci-fi artist. RIP.

Anyone got a spare raise dead blog or resurrect site?... and maybe a few restorations while you're at it?

2010-04-16T10:01:00.012-04:00

"I've fallen... and I can't get up!"

According to the historical log here, my last actual blog entry was on waaaaaaaaayyy back on Friday, November 13, 2009. Yikes! There's no specific reason for the downtime. Life just sorta got in the way somewhere along the line. I guess that happens every now and again.

Then along came rpg blog vet (and one of my all time fave bloggers around these parts) Jeff Rients, from Jeff's Gameblog. He sorta nudged my blog-corpse a bit, in a comment response to a comment I made on one of his recent posts, basically pouring a virtual potion of healing down my blog-gullet. So I guess I'll consider Jeff the group cleric in this one-shot here. I sure hope he's got the XP levels to pull this off. It's been so long though, that it might actually take a group effort. So gather around if ya would, please.

I hope to get back in the groove and post again here on some sorta consistent frequency. In the past I've gone from once every other week to a few times a day. We'll just have to see how it plays out I guess.

Please (limited) wish me luck. With your blessings, I just might be able to get this blog back on it's feet.

I'd really hate to have to resort to darker methods, ya'know?

The Prisoner - in RPG form?

2009-11-13T13:23:00.012-05:00

Ok, so I've been away for quite some time here. Just crazy times around here, with lots going on.

Anyway, I'm getting geared up for "The Prisoner" - AMC's reimagined miniseries version of the insane yet incredible late-'60s British TV series, which begins this Sunday night. The original is one of my all time favorite TV shows. I'm a bit nervous about how this new take will turn out, but still I'm planning on watching it, and giving it the chance it deserves. Hope it rocks, actually.

On that note, I started thinking about The Prisoner as an RPG. Was there ever such a thing? If so, how did I miss it? Have folks run their own take on it, just house-ruling stuff, using their favorite system(s)?

I poked around briefly on teh interwebzz, and only saw one official product which was for the GURPS system.

Here is some discussion on the idea in general at RPGnet forums, which actually includes some talk of the GURPS supplement.

And here is the main review entry for it (the GURPS one) over at RPGnet.

I've never played GURPS. I do have one GURPS product - the Conan Solitaire Adventure, which I have yet to try. But other than that I never got into GURPS as a system. Anyone ever use this GURPS Prisoner product?

Or even better, anyone ever run any other RPG, involving ol' Number 6?

I mean, the map/world is pretty well-defined already.

I wonder what the stats on a rover might look like.

And man!, the NPCs are sa-weet! Plus they are pretty easily indexed...ha!

"Be seeing you!"

Mismarked Gamescience dice: 1d6 = 1d4+1?

2009-09-18T17:26:00.014-04:00

So, I recently added to my (embarrassingly too large) pile of Gamescience dice. I just can't help myself, really. It's quite sad.

I snagged a few packs from a FLGS, as I noticed that they were new additions to the front counter glass showcase. I left the shop with a lighter wallet, but a heavier dice bag, as I just couldn't say no to any of these bad boys: all 7-dice poly sets in the colors Coal Black, Pumpkin Orange, Seashell White, and Peridot (gem).

When I got home, I promptly broke out the trusty Pilot ultra-fine black permanent marker and began inking them. BTW, for a real nice personal procedure on inking GS dice, check out Jeff Rients' post on the subject. Well except for the periodot (gem) set. That one was destined for the white paint pen treatment.

Anyway, I usually set out the whole set and just go down the row, inking a single digit on a single die, and then moving on to the next in line, to allow the ink to dry on the previous die. For some strange reason this time I started with the seashell white set, and more specifically the 00-90 d10. I inked the whole die (mostly I guess because I had some downtime on that die, as I was playing a bit with my kids during the inking exercise) and then grabbed the d6.

I spun it around, looking for my normal starting digit, the 1. Hhhmmn....where is that pesky loneliest number? Here? Nope Oh wait, here it is...nope. Hmmn...well, isn't it on the opposite side of the 6? Yeah, I think so. So where's the 6? Hhhmmn..... WTF?

Truth be told, it didn't take that long to figure it out. But I must say I was a bit perplexed, as I have never had any issue with any Gamescience dice like this in the past. Upon further investigation (hehe), I noted that this d6 was numbered 2, 2, 3, 4, 5, 5. Weird.

So it's not really a cheater dice (not that I would ever use such a vile thing!). I mean yeah, it will never role a measily 1 damage. Nor will it ever hinder the "3d6 in-order" hero creation process in the worst of ways. But...it also will never max out with max damage. Nor will it ever allow a natural 18 ability score (cuz we all normally get those all the time, right?).

Weird, I say. Weird.

Have any of you seen this kind of mismark? Especially on such a precision-heavy (wow, that sounds weirdly weighted) product as Gamescience dice?

I know I haven't. I called the shop to let the owner know, and he said there would be no problem exchanging them. I say them, because this was the case with the d6 in both the seashell white and the pumpin sets. The black set and the peridot set bot had normally marked d6s.

I also informed the shop owner that the only issue I feared he may have with the return/exchange was the fact that I had already inked the 00-90 d10 in the white set, before I even noticed the flawed d6. He reassured me that he had no problem with it and he would take care of it for me, no questions. Coolness.

I kinda wonder if he secretly has a role in mind for the defective d6s. Maybe he's tired of doing the math on a 1d4+1. These bad boys look to be the perfect solution for that 2-5 range...in a mutant-bell-curve sorta way. Hhhmmnn......

El Chupacabra found (again)? or just another hairless mutated coyote?

2009-09-03T02:01:00.013-04:00

Looks like another el Chupacabra has been found...allegedly. Weird how a single entity like the Chupacabra can be found (dead) again, right?

"Here goatie-goatie...here, goatie-goatie..."

Anyway, here's the news link which provides the following pics and video of this poor pooch... errr... ferocious beast:

Well, it's certainly not the first time we've seen Mutant Future-esque canines like this. In fact these seem to crop up all the time, but this one just cracked me up a little more than usual. Here's another story of some lady who found one of these close-shaven, anti-dentite doggies, pretty much exactly 2 years ago. Do you see a trend?

That 2007 finding was blasted as a hoax (as it should be) in articles like this one. Ah well, good times regardless...ha!

Somehow, I always pictured the grisly "goat-sucker" a little more...oh I dunno....scary?

"Grrrr....Arrrrggh!"

AD&D DMG Appendix P: ¿Como se huh?

2009-08-31T11:32:00.017-04:00

Never heard of it.

"let's see...Appendix L, M, N, O....."

Until this past weekend, that is.

I was poking around locally last week for some B/X D&D to either join or start if need be, but really had no takers. I then decided to add 1st edition AD&D as a possible option too. That's when I got a bite. The local D&D Meetup around these parts seems to pull in mostly 3.5 and 4e players. I have met up with them at a couple past meetups and played 4e at both of those with other members of the meetup crew.

The bite came from one of the organizers of that meetup. He invited me to join their existing 1st edition AD&D game that gets together somewhat irregularly, which actually is a bonus for me. I'm already committed to one weekly gaming night, and I can't add another strict commitment to my calendar. So an irregular hookup for some 1st ed AD&D sounded very cool to me.

I was informed that the party consisted of 2 rangers (one of them multiclassed as a cleric), a fighter, a thief, and an every-once-in-a-while cleric. They would appreciate another caster, but I could play anything I wanted. I went with magic-user. I don't think I ever played one in 1st edition AD&D, so that would be fun.
I was told to that I could roll up a 5th level character either prior to the session or when I got there. This is where I was directed to Appendix P of the DMG. "Appendix P? WTF is that?"

Well, I haven't played in a true tabletop PnP 1st edition AD&D game since somewhere in the mid '80s. I'd say probably during the 1983-85 timeframe. That campaign was highly homebrewed, mixing in some B/X, some AD&D, and some of whatever our DM wanted. It was a blast back then, but it could possibly cause me some issues jumping into an existing game like this new one.

Now, I do occasionally play in a 2nd edition AD&D game, online using a chatroom with a built-in voice program, with some friends of mine around the country. We all met playing DDO (the D&D MMO) and make use of it's chat/voice/dice functions to play every few months. That game, however is very homebrewed, as the world, races, classes, etc have been customized if not altogether created from scratch in many ways. It's been a ton of fun and I should write a post about it soon as well.

At any rate, the point is I was a little out of touch with 1st ed AD&D, by-the-book.

So, I pulled out the old DMG and looked for Appendix P, whatever that is. If you don't know (you all probably do, but still) it's a quick way of creating a level X character or party. In fact it is officially stated as APPENDIX P: CREATING A PARTY ON THE SPUR OF THE MOMENT. You still roll 4d6, drop the lowest for abilities, arrange as you like, pick a class/race, adjust based on that if able, and then the fun comes in. You get to roll for magic items!

Seeing how my new M-U was 5th level, it is presumed that he may have come across some sweet loot in his 5 levels of smoothness. So I rolled the bones and got tons of cool stuff, right? Wrong. I will say that I felt very blessed to have rolled very good on the Ring of Protection in the armor section, as having succeeded on the initial roll (75% chance) to see if I got one, I also rolled good enough to bump it to a +2. That was a measily %5 chance, IIRC. Yay, me!

But sadly, that's where the yay ends. I did not get bracers (20% shot). No scrolls (75%). No weapons (75% for a +1 dagger). Not even a single freakin' potion (50%). Ah well, +2 Ring of Protection it is.

Now I understand that this method of generating a level X character isn't some massivively amazing finding, but it was something that I missed in all the years of owning a 1st ed DMG, and I think I got mine back in '81. Imagine that. Ok, maybe '82, but that kinda ruins the vibe, right?

Anyway, on to the play session...

The group was very friendly, very helpful, and very open to me jumping into their group, even it might be with very sporadic frequency. My character found employment with them while hanging out in a local tavern. Crazy, right? Skipping right along, off we went on a journey together.

I won't go all into the story, but I will tell you that the first day of adventuring was pretty hilarious. Reason I say that is the only spell-casting the party ever saw me do during that first day (and that's questionable if they actually saw me do it or not) was one shield spell. Ya' see the problem was that I memorized sleep (x2), shield (x2), web (x2), and a fireball. Sounded pretty good to me. Sadly, things didn't quite gel with that spell array. For one, the DM had originally (and admittedly) created this romp with no caster in mind, so many of the baddies were either immune or highly resistant to these selections. We faced zombies (they don't sleep very well), hell hounds (hit dice to high, and the whole flaming thing), a door mimic (again with the high HD, etc), more zombies, a few crab-like creatures with tentacles? (drawing a blank here and at work without my books to help me out - I'll find them and edit the post), more hell hounds, and finally a pair of Bone devils, IIRC (waaaaay to high HD, not to mention magic resistance).

Actually the last few there were in day 2 of the adventuring. Seeing how I was pretty useless with my original selection, I memorized a slightly different batch for that day's work. I went with one sleep ('cause, well, it's still sleep for Pete's sake), one shield (still a bit of a wuss M-U, and the AC bump is nice), one web (again, maybe they'll let me use it at least once, even if it's to help in our escape from the place), but threw in magic missle (x2), one ray of enfeeblement, and one lightning bolt. I was gambling that the fire-based baddies would continue to pop up, and maybe lightning would harm them better, and magic missle would be good for just about anything.

See, I originally went with a more controlling approach to my magic-user, making him lawful neutral and RPing him a little on the "there must be order in this crazy world", "I'll put you where I want you and keep you there", stuff like that. Well, the party was kinda used to a little more of an offensive night out, and they must have had some bad experience with web before, as they really didn't want me to cast that...ha!

They were basically all frontline fighters (save the thief, who tried to do his thieving tasks and then get the heck back - smart man), so firing offensive spells into the mix was very risky. The melee folks dished out a real nice wallop when needed, and actually for most of the encounters they really didn't have much trouble. Fire damage from the hell hounds' breath weapon attack was probably the most trouble early on. The mimic was a little touchy as he grabbed the thief during his find/remove traps and open locks checks on the door. Still, not too bad of a fight for the rest of the thugs in our party. The zombies were a pushover for our cleric/ranger, even though they did come back from turning quite quickly.

Turned, and returned. Screw it, just waste 'em.

There was a clue to the last fight, that I guess my character was supposed to pick up on. Although in this case, it would seem that I the player would have to pick up on it, using some knowledge that I just don't have: a symbol for sulfur. Originally, the party thought it was a directional, as it did look a bit like an arrow pointing which way to go. However, I was later told by the DM that my character recognizes it as a symbol for sulfur. Ok, well we had been discussing salt, and how it might affect certain creatures (undead?), but still none of us had any on us. I recalled some bags and boxes that we had not checked yet in some rooms earlier in the crawl. In the end, we were told that that mark also symbolizes demon or devil. I'm not sure if I was supposed to have known that or surmised it, but if I had we might have known what was luring behind that final doorway. Ah well.

Regardless, I was still having a blast playing with them, even though they were worried that I was bored, as I hadn't really been able to contribute much. The thief actually RP'd some "I'm beginning to wonder if we really did hire a wizard." To which my guy replied "well I have this pointy hat, these robes, and this staff...isn't that the right getup?" (muttering "that costume shop back in town better not have steered me wrong...")

My big, bright shining moment came (or would have came) when we reached the big bad devils. I could be wrong on the type of devil, I just recall the size, the hooked weapon, the wall-of-ice (I'll get to that), etc...so I'm thinking they were Bone Devils. Anyway, they had just suggested (possibly part of their fear attack?) our main damage dealer into joining their team or at least siding with them to some degree, and feared our other frontliner (who also happened to be our healer - multiclassed cleric/ranger) into running away. So that left our thief, who doesn't dig the up-close-and-personal, another party member PC who was basically mapping for us as an intern (ha!), and me the wuss magic-user. Well, I got an idea. They were basically lined up for me, one in the doorway and the other back inside the room a bit, with a nice wall right behind him. So I let loose a lightning bolt hoping to hit one, then the next, then the back wall them back through those two again for max damage (60 hp to each of them), of course, right? RIGHT?!?!?

Everyone was geeked for this uber spell to save the day. I rolled those 5d6 down through the old dice boot/tower, and stared down at a whopping 13 damage....ugh. Ah well, 26 hp to each of them with that backlash double strike would still be ok. Certainly they would both fail their saves and had no magic resistance to speak of, right? RIGHT?!?!?!? Well they both saved, both times, and even with half damage, their 40% MR basically said...nope, sorry, try again sir. Sadly that was the only shot I had, with only one level 3 spell in the aresnal.

There went my shining moment. The only good thing to come out of the attempt was that the thief became a believer. He witnessed electricity arch from my fingertips and blast across the room. Ok, so it didn't seem to do anything to the big baddies, at least he felt confident in his hiring procedures, believing me to at least be the magic-user I claimed to be. I think.

At this point our main frontliner shook off the suggestion/fear so she started to engage them, along with the thief. Yes, I said the thief. See, he happened to notice that the fleeing cleric/ranger dropped his nice sunblade when he decided to run away. This looked like a nice choice for a weapon (shortsword, IIRC), so he decided to demo it on these devils. I readied a magic missle (well, 3 missles actually, being 5th level), and was about to let them fly, when the devils threw up a wall of ice on the doorway, blocking me out and our fighter and our thief in. The good guys put the fatal smack down on the baddies, with the thief stealing a 1 hp kill shot on the last one...ha! Awesome, but that's kinda what a thief does...steals. Our intern cartographer had tackled our cleric/ranger to hold him down until he shook the fear effect, and we all began picking away at the wall of ice. Man, sure could use a fireball right about now. Ugh.

In summary, I had a blast! It has been far too long since I've played 1st edition, especially in person, across the table from the rest of the crew. Even though my magic-user was fairly useless this time around, I still had a ton of fun, and I really appreciate the gaming group for allowing me to join them. It turns out that they actually try to meet up more frequently than I can commit to, but they often have issues with that anyway, as others in the group have other RL conflicts too. Hopefully I can join them at least once a month dust off the old books, as well as the old skills, all from back in .... errr ... close enough.

Dunwich Detectives, Call of Cthulhu Minions, and other loot: I am sooooo weak!

2009-08-26T15:33:00.020-04:00

Oh dear. Oh deaaarrr! I told you I was weak. I knew it would happen. It happened.

When I recently asked for some input on Call of Cthulhu the RPG vs Arkham Horror the board game for a gaming purchase by yours truly, I fully called it. I said that I was very weak, and if I came across some good deals on any of this stuff that I would cave. Well I did, and I did.

I initially held off on the quick impulse buy for the one night alone at home that I was going to have, sans family, and decided to watch The Call of Cthulhu silent film by the HPLHS. That was very cool and was enough for me to make it through without buying anything for that activity. Good deal.

But, two days later on the return trip from the weekend getaway where I met up with my family after the night home alone, I stopped at an LGS on the way home. Well, I guess it's not really an LGS as it's not local to my home. But since it's local to where I was during my trip, we'll leave it at that.

Anyway, when I asked if they had any CoC stuff, they informed me that they had the rulebook but that was it. So I snagged that:

Call of Cthulhu (6th ed)

So that's it, eh? That's all they had? Nope. When I hit the shelves looking for anything else that might catch my eye I found these awesome little dudes:

Dunwich Detectives

...and this collection of brief encounters:

Minions

bad flash...bad!

...and these additional supplements:

The Keeper's Companion 2

Secrets of New York

Then I saw the clearance section, which housed these two gems:

Eldritch Horrors & Occult Investigators counter pack

Elric! Gamemaster Screen

I also couldn't make it past the dice section where I noticed the sole 12-pc Gamescience set, which although highly overpriced (IMO) was still worth grabbing as I have always wanted a full 12-pc set of these. I have several 7-pc sets of Gamescience dice, both opaque and gem styles, but I have yet to find locally one of the 12-pc sets. So I snagged it too.

Gamescience 12-pc dice set

Did I mention yet that I was weak?

Now, as of this purchase I have discovered a somewhat-local GS that carries a few of the 12-pc Gamescience sets, but I think I will be strong and roll with this one alone. I will very likely never have a reason to even use any of the additional "5 unique shapes"...but still sometimes you just have to own something, ya'know?

Now back to the fack that I was weak. Ya' see, normally I wouldn't just plop down hard earned cash for supplements and other goodies for a game (CoC) that I don't even know if I will like or not. But in this case I trust the many opinions of the folks that commented on my initial post, and their high ratings, along with the fact that this store had all of this stuff marked down...waaaaay down in some cases. I just bit the bullet and grabbed it all.

If they would have had a copy of Arkham Horror in the clearance section, I'd be posting a pic of that too...ha! Maybe next time, eh?

Anyway, I'm not posting this stuff to be all "naner, naner, naner...look what I got!" Well, maybe a little. But really it's because most of us (if not all of us) geek out on this stuff, and I figured I'd let you in on a few goodies that I'm geekin' on and maybe you'd dig them too.

Also, I'm curious on opinions as to if these supplements are decent for the game or not. If you have any XP with any of the, please chime in on that. It's ok if something I just bought sucks. I'd prefer that it didn't, but again such a good deal was made on the lot, that I'd accept that is it was true. Regardless I looooove the minis (even if CoC doesn't call for them as much as other games), and I was going to snag the main CoC rulebook (6th ed) from another local source in a couple days anyway. I also think the Minions encounter book will be nice for me to use in trying out some CoC locally, if I can muster up a group. It looks perfect for some one-shots to try out the game. The dice set is a keeper for sure, and the counters pack and Elric screen were so cheap they were an automatic grab. I guess the Secrets of NY and the Keeper's Companion supplements are the two that may have been overkill and possible not worth the dough. I just don't see much 1920s CoC stuff around here (more '90s and Now) and that's the era I would prefer to run, if and when I finally do. It just seems right.

Ah well, I'll leave you with some pics of some fun I had dorking around with these Detectives, posing them on what I thought was a somewhat relative backdrop:

Yes, I am a dork. Apparently a very, very weak-willed one.

"Must...not...give...in! Must...not...spend!"

"The Whisperer in Darkness": another upcoming Lovecraft flick by the HPLHS

2009-08-21T13:56:00.008-04:00

Whoooahhh! Now this looks sa-wwweeeeeet!

Not much time to babble on about it here, but just a couple links to get you checking it out, if you haven't already:

the HPLHS homepage

their trailer page for "The Whisperer in Darkness"

their updates page for the project's process

If this is all old news to ya'll then, I guess I suck. However, if it's new to anyone, then I suck a little bit less, right?

I only saw it as I hit up the HPLHS site after chatting it up with some of you folks (including: Atom Kid, Christopher B, ATOM and rainswept) in the comments section of my last post.

I hope I'm not totally swiping this from one of your blogs (anyone reading this, really), as I have certainly done that before without truly knowing I did (oops!). I can honestly say that this is the first I have seen of this new movie, and I am now severely geeked!

Anyway, check out that trailer. Check out the pics. Check out the whole deal. IMO, from the looks of what they have so far, this thing is gonna be freakin' sa-weet.

Can't wait!

"The Call of Cthulhu" (DVD): some silent-movie goodness ...err ...evilness

2009-08-19T15:06:00.018-04:00

During my recent indecision in buying the board game Arkham Horror or the RPG Call of Cthulhu, I spent an evening home alone watching this flick, The Call of Cthulhu:

I've had this DVD for at least a year and a half, and very likely since it's release date. I recall buying it from a local Barnes & Noble, taking it home, opening it, and then placing it in a pile (not the pile, but a pile, of many piles) of DVDs to watch...soon.

Ahem. Well, obviously soon came much later than expected.

At any rate, seeing how I was in a bit of a Lovecraft mode last week, I recalled that I had this DVD somewhere in a box, somewhere in the basement. So I started digging. The activity was well worth it, as I unearthed many more gems in the forms of DVDs, magazines, rulebooks, paperbacks, etc. - not all from the horror genre, but still horror/sci-fi/fantasy/roleplaying in all cases. I'll save some of that for a later post.

I had the one night home alone before I headed out of town to meet up with my wife and kids at a retreat/vacation for the remainder of the weekend, so I figured if I couldn't yet play AH or CoC, I would at least immerse myself in some Lovecraftian coolness one way or another.

The film strays some from the original story, from what I recall, but all in all it did not disappoint. It was not a full fledged edge-of-the-seat nailbiter, but it was still fun, and still a bit creepy at times. This may have been assisted by the fact that I was home, alone. So, although this was nothing on the level of of The Omen ("Look at me, Damien! It's all for you."), The Shining, The Exorcist, or even Salem's Lot (I don't care what you say, that levitating dead kid scratching at the bedroom window still freaks me out!), it was fun to turn down the lights, and fire up this bad boy anyway.

A little humor is thrown in at the start with this copyright warning:
"Violators of HPLHS copyrights may have their eyes plucked out by byakhee as they sleep."

The text speech frames were very nice and worked perfectly following the silent mouthing of dialogue performed by the actors. The lighting and makeup really made this all come together.

A few weak spots, IMO, were the dream sequences, but I say that only due to the cheap-looking set designs. I understand it must be difficult to imagine and to try describe on film using props something that is non-Euclidean, so I wasn't too bothered by it. But honestly, I've seen better sets on some Twilight Zone episodes. Ah well. Still, very very cool stuff regardless.

I did like the swamp scenes, which although when seen in the extras portion of the DVD were shown to be fairly basic and simple in design too, came across much better and much more creepy (read: believable) during the final cut of the film.

I really dug many of the props used, including statues, newspaper clippings, notes, etc. I'd love to get my hands on some of that gear.

The stop-motion techniques used for ol' Squidward, himself were a little silly in this sort of a film. But I guess it did provide the throw-back that the film as a whole was going for, and again I understand that with certain budget concerns and various technical limitations that any other method of creating the great Cthulhu on-screen, would most likely have beeen very difficult to pull off. I'm a huge Ray Harryhausen fan, so I probably took it a little too tough on this film in those regards.

I'm not sure if I've seen a silent movie since The Phantom of the Opera, so this was a real treat for me. In a pinch, as a substitute for some solitaire Lovecraftian gaming, this film The Call of Cthulhu filled in very nicely. I truly enjoyed it. Check it out if you get the chance. Just hurry up before those darn stars align again!

Call of Cthulhu RPG and/or Arkham Horror board game: looking for opinions and/or suggestions

2009-08-12T14:35:00.011-04:00

I'm not sure how many of you that may read this have experience with either of these two Lovecraftian gaming gems, but I do know that I have none. Absolutely none. So I'm looking for some opinions on them if you have played them and additionally some suggestions on any supplements or expansions to either of them which you would recommend.

Obviously these are two completely different games, requiring different commitments and different game time, etc. I mean one of them is a full blown RPG and the other is a (pretty expensive) board game. Still I've been on a bit of a Lovecraft kick lately, in regards to my reading list, and I've been toying with the idea of getting into one, if not both of these games.

First up: Call of Cthulhu - the RPG

I think I'll partially thank/blame James over at Grognardia for the Call of Cthulhu "calling" I've been hearing lately. Reading through some of his recent Stormbringer RPG posts has linked me back to some of his previous various Chaosium games posts, which include some very high praise for CoC.

Also, many posts by Brunomac over at Temple of Demogorgon have also inspired me with the idea of trying to start or find a game of Call of Cthulhu. So some of the thanks/blame is on you too, bro...ha!

I'm sure that I'm leaving out some other great bloggers here, who I've very likely already read some postings regarding Call of Cthulhu, but my brain is real sketchy today, so please forgive me for any forgetfulness folks. The two recommendations noted above are the ones fresh in my mind, and alone are truly enough to make me want to play the RPG, but I'm open for some more thoughts from anyone reading this. Anyone? Bueller?

Ok, next contestant: Arkham Horror - the board game

I didn't find any relevant posts at the two blogs above regarding this game. Maybe I didn't look hard enough? Maybe neither of them have played the game? Dunno. Without spending the rest of the day reading reviews all over the innerwebbz, I figured I'd try a little fishing here. So, anyone giving this post the once-over ever play Arkham Horror? I know there are several expansions for this one, all costing a ton of dough, IMO. Still, I may have to try it out as an H.P. fix sooner than CoC, as according to ther back of the box, I can play this one solo. Like, really-solo. Like, solitaire-solo. Hmmn.....

My wife and kids will be out of town a day or two soon, and I was thinking I might play some more B/X solitaire, or Tunnels & trolls, but now I'm starting to think a little bit of Arkham Horror, solitaire, alone in my house, by candle-light...or maybe even a lantern. OOoooooooo.....

If only I lived by the sea. I wonder if some of those ambient, ocean sounds on MP3 might work as a substitute. The waves crashing in....the releasing of the Great Old Ones... err.... uhm ok, maybe that's pushing it a bit.

The '81 in me is pulling me towards finding a 1st ed copy of Call of Cthulhu, although the 6th ed is sitting right there on the store shelf...ugh. Not to mention Arkham Horror is ready for me to play solitaire right freakin' now. Well, as soon as I plop down the cash, that is. What do I do? Do I go the distance and try to find/create a CoC RPG gaming group? Or do I just get my fill solo-style (errr....right) and go with Arkham Horror? Or both?!?!?!?

Oh for the love of Wilbur Whateley!

(very cool painting by Skot Olsen)

Painting minis again: the kiddies join in too!

2009-07-17T13:20:00.016-04:00

Well, it's been a while. I almost forgot how to do this posting thing. Looks like a month has flown by since my last one. I guess I'll blame it on summer vacations and such...why not? This is my first summer since beginning to blog, so maybe it's somewhat normal. Hitting some of my favorite blogs during this seasonal break of sorts (remotely usually via my phone), I do in fact see some that have slowed down quite a bit, while other diehards have kept up their usual impressive pace.

At any rate, I have previously noted that I wished to get back to painting minis. I haven't done so since the mid '80s! I have shown some pics of a few of my old Grenadier, Ral Partha, Citadel, and TSR lead minis from that era, but other than those, I really don't recall dipping a brush and slapping the paint on any of them since then.

I dug through some of my old painting gear, and as it turns out it almost all pretty much useless at this point. Paints have dried up and brushes have become mutilated. It was time to update my supplies and have a go.

I snagged some Reaper paints at a local gaming shop, then stopped by a local art store for some brushes, palettes, knives, sticky-stuff, primers, and finishes. I already have tons of minis to paint - tons of old lead figs, some newer lead-free ones, and some plastic guys too.

Now my son has really taken an interest in minis, and even my little girl has been known to join in some games, so I knew they would want to make a mess... err... do some painting too. So I set up the kitchen table, because that's just where you're supposed to gaming and gaming related stuff (IMO), and we all sat down to paint us some minis.

Here's my little girl's first (and last) attempt. There's something utterly terrifying about pink, glittering undead, ya'know?:

And here's my son's first go at it, same zombie fig, as I have (quite literally) 100 of them:

I figured I'd start them out on the zombies, mainly because I have so many of them (cheap and great for undead minions and mobs in general), so that if they totally hosed them up, they could just grab another and hit it again.

Well, my daughter spent somewhere around a whopping 5 minutes in her miniature painting career and retired from the hobby...for now, at least. Best part about her supplies - the pink glitter that she absolutely insisted on using is actually your basic glitter glue, which actually turned out perfect to sum up a 3 y.o.'s infatuation with princesses, Barbies, Littlest Pet Shop, etc. The artwork completely mirrored the artist in this case. Well that is, minus the whole undead, brain-eating thing.

However "the boys" stayed at it. My son's next attempt was a plastic Dwarf Crossbowman:

This fig is from that bunch of Dwarves from the Grenadier Fantasy Warriors game, as discussed in some comments of this post. I have bunches of these figs, as well as dwarf axemen, orcs, goblins, etc from that same game. They too are great for minions, or bigger groups of baddies, as well as good specimens for the kiddies to learn how to paint. Heck I even used one (a staff wielding dwarf) for one of my current 4e characters, a Dwarf Invoker - looks exactly the part for that guy. I'll post a pic or two of that mini. It was one of the first few I did in this return to painting minis endeavor. I just don't have the pics on me ATM. Ah well.

Although he chose the flesh color for the dude's beard, I'd have to say that for a 5 y.o.'s second attempt at painting a mini, he freakin' rocked the house! I am very, very proud of his work. He is too. Check him out modeling his masterpiece:

It was pretty funny when he asked across the table, "Daddy, what color are you using for your guy's face?" I replied a bit smart-@$$edly, "Uhmm....the face color. That one right there." He replied, as if nothing was strange about his choice, "Oh, I used that color for my guy's beard." Awesome. He did a great job on some of the details, like the hand-axe on the belt, the crossbow, sections of the armor, straps, etc. That face and beard swap is freakin' funky though...hehe.

As far as my own mini painting, the only one I have with me on this SD card is this Reaper Gnome:

I needed a good gnome for another current 4e character I'm playing, a Gnome Illusionist Wizard. I couldn't find a good gnome caster mini from the WotC D&D mini sets, and this guy looked a lot like how I pictured my character, so I decided to paint him up and use him for those sessions. I know I didn't do a very good job on him, but I guess all things considered it actually turned out better than I expected. It really has been a looooooooong time since I did this....hehe. I went a little crazy with the gold dry-brushing, but after I accidentally got a little bit of it on his hair, I kinda liked the glitter look (thanks to my little girl's zombie influence?), and decided that since he worships Garl Glittergold, why the F not just sprinkle it all over him. And so there it is - an excuse... err... a reason for my messy dry-brushing techniques....cool. What say ye, Garl?

"Meh."

I'll try to collect the pics of the other figs we painted that day and the next, as some of them are quite interesting. My son made up his own version of washing and dry-brushing...with mixed results. I think he did some retouching on the crossbowman fig too, IIRC, so I'll post more pics of that one, if that's the case.

After feeling all good about myself for still having (some) skills, my wonderful wife served me up with this gem: "So which one did you paint and which one did Bobby paint?" And she was serious.

Laugh it up fellas. Laugh it up.

Reeeeaaaaaaal funny.

B4 - The Lost City boxer shorts?!?!?

2009-06-17T14:24:00.013-04:00

Oh the humanity!

My apologies for not yet posting the follow-up to my romp through M1 - Blizzard Pass. I still have to get the audio sorted from my son's run through it. If it doesn't work out, I'll just summarize the session. Kinda like ending one season with a cliff-hanger, and then having the show canceled. I suck, I know. Sorry. It'll be up soon.

Anyway, I was cleaning up my hard drive here and found a saved pic of the awesome cover art for module B4 - The Lost City captured on the front of a 3/4-sleeve concert jersey. Now that is freakin' cool, eh?

How appropriate. Setting the way-back machine to 1982...anyone wanna come along?

Well, I am a huge fan of basically all of the old Basic/Expert D&D and 1st ed AD&D artists, and Jim Holloway's works are most certainly some of my faves. His awesome art is a constant source of inspiration for gaming, blogging, and just plain fantasizing in general.

On top of that, B4 is an incredible module, loved by many. Of course Tom Moldvay deserves most of the credit for that affection, but Jim's artwork helps solidify B4 as one of my (and numerous other players'/DMs') favorite D&D modules.

From the home page at www.jimhollowayart.com you can find the link featuring his work on t-shirts, mugs, and stuff. The first one you'll see is the B4 cover, but you can get several other Holloway D&D/AD&D gems at this site too. Heck maybe I should snag this one too. It's the absolute inspiration I used when imagining Beechum, the halfling I played in JimLotFP's recent online Labyrinth Lord game. I'm not kidding when I say I had that illo printed out right next to my PC. Maybe a golf shirt version would be best. That way I can get away with wearing it to work. Business Casual? Sure.

So if you dig Holloway (and if you don't, you should), and especially if you dig B4, then head on over there and snag a jersey or a coffee mug...maybe even a wall calendar. Oh and don't forget the boxers! If you need any further prodding, check out the item description on the site:

"Enjoy the roomy comfort of our sexy boxers as underwear or sleepwear. They're 100% cotton, open fly for thinking outside the boxers. Boxers, because you don't want to be brief."

You may wanna hurry up though, as it looks like a few of these guys might be needing a new pair soon enough too. I know I sure would.

Ohhh @#$%!!!

Solo module (M1 - Blizzard Pass) conquered?

2009-06-10T16:07:00.024-04:00

A couple weeks ago I posted that I was going to run some solo mods, mainly because my gaming had dried up with the abrupt closing of a local game store and the fallout/disconnect of the gaming group following that move.

Well a few things happened since then:

I solo'd thru M1- Blizzard Pass
I DM'd (sorta) M1 for my 5 y.o. son
I played in a session of JimLotFP's Labyrinth Lord game
I reconnected with my former gaming group...sorta

The last point is a "sorta" because the gaming group is now a mixed bag of some of the guys I gamed with before the store closing, and some of their other gaming friends from other groups (these guys game a lot!). At any rate, I've played in two sessions now, both different campaigns with mostly the same folks. These are weekly sessions, alternating between the two campaigns. One is currently level 3, and the other is level 11. So that's cool.

I also am especially hoping that JimLotFP will run some more online LL for us, as that was a complete blast.

In summary, I'm all smiles.

Anyway, back to the solo stuff...

So I looked thru the pile of solo/solitaire mods (D&D/AD&D/Tunnels&Trolls/etc) and decided it was gonna be M1 - Blizzard Pass:

I have three copies of this thing (don't ask why), but it kinda worked out nicely as a means to make the most out of some of these old and no-longer-revealable invisible ink text boxes. I also made heavy use of that very cool online project I mentioned last time, which is a collection of the revealed entries from all of the text boxes in M1.

So I printed out those text box entries, grabbed the module, and then gathered up this stuff...

My "lucky" dice cup and some precision edge dice (of course - well except for the d100...ha! that was just for fun with thieving skills), mostly gamescience BTW:

A photocopy of my favorite character sheet ever to fill in with the stats for the character I rolled up for this solo mod - they recommend the pre-gen guy, but I wanted to roll some dice early, so I created a Footpad named "Grep" (any old timer DOS... err... Unix users out there?) and played by the module character's gear rules/restrictions:

I neglected to jot down his (un)bonus to damage and opening doors from that whopping 7 strength...not sure why, I guess we'll blame it on being 2am. It never really mattered...ha!

The red box set (even though I prefer Moldvay's Basic, this module was released with the Mentzer version, so I figured I'd stay true to that for this run) and my battered and beaten DM screen (AC2 - Combat Shield and Mini-adventure...love that ratty old thing):

First off, the screen is obviously useful for easier lookups on charts and lists:

But also for this guy! I mean the graphic alone of this crazy halfling running for his life is reason alone for propping this bad boy up for the session:

Some old Grenadier minis too, to add to the whole vibe. I mean, I am playing this darn thing alone in my kitchen, at about 2 am, so I need to make this as cool as I can, right?:

That action shot there is my thief Grep and his new buddies Roderick (the cleric) and Salamdros (an elf) duking it out with some lizardmen (reptile-men, I think they called them...meh). Here's a shot of the module, pretty close to that time-frame:

That's one tough predicament our heroes are in, eh? Did they put it to those dastardly lizardmen and prove victorious? Or in the end did module M1 get the best of Grep and his new friends?

"Tune in next time for the conclusion of Blizzard Pass: passed or failed."

A cliffhanger...ha!

Actually I will only provide some details of my run through the module in my next post. I really don't want to give too much away as far as decisions and such go. Sure, there are numerous paths which you could take and have a totally different story than I did, but you may not want to hear too much of the story in case you do decide to play through it yourself.

However, I will let you know the outcome of my solo session next time. Additionally and more importantly (at least to me) is that after I ran this myself, I DM'd it (sorta) for my 5 y.o. son Bobby. He's been all into minis and D&D related stuff as of late (too many past posts to reference - half of this blog is Bobby playing cool stuff with me), and his eyes lit up when he awoke the next morning to find all this stuff left out on the kitchen table from my late night session.

I ran him through it and took some fun pics of that event too. I also recorded some of it with the voice recorder function on my cell phone, so maybe if those turn out ok when copied here, you'll get a chance to hear some of the fun we had. I've yet to upload any audio to this blog, so that may not work out, but I hope it does so that you can experience Blizzard Pass as played by a very young future D&Der.

So until next time, what do you think...did Grep and his gang conquer Blizzard Pass or was it a TPK?

Iron spikes, 10 foot poles, and lots and lots of rope!

2009-06-05T14:09:00.016-04:00

Well we did it. We played in Jim Raggi's (LotFP - Lamentations of the Flame Princess) online Labyrinth Lord game, session #2 in this case for a couple of the guys.

And we lived! Well, most of us did....sorta.

A couple of my adventuring comrades have already posted on the fun that was had, so I'll send you over to The Dwarf and The Basilisk for Matthew's (Sunniva the chaotic dwarf) take, and over to Running With Dice, where jerm (Cerran, our curious thief) also discusses the session.

As noted in both of those great posts, we were playing (playtesting?) through some of Jim's own personal creation, which will be published very soon. Thus the details will be very few, as to not give away any of the coolness.

Three members of the crew were returning vets from last week's session, and jerm and myself joined up in a return to the ugly. In full force we were as follows:

Sunniva - chaotic female dwarf
Cerran - neutral male thief
Vander - lawful male cleric
Roland - neutral? male fighter
Beechum - lawful male halfling

and of course the doombringer... err... storyteller/gamemaster himself (Jim):

Sunniva and Cerran have been described a bit by their players in the blog links noted above, so I'll let you check those out for yourself. For a description of my little guy Beechum, I will refer you to this Jim Holloway drawing, which is what I had printed out next to my character sheet last night as inspiration. This is almost exactly who Beechum was/is to me:
...well, except for the armor and the axe at his side. Beechum wears chain mail and a shield, or at least he did until he had to beat-(hairy)feet, running for his life.

Additionally although he does in fact prefer the sling as a weapon, being graced with a nice talent at missile attacks, he also carries both a spear and a silver dagger for up close and personal scuffles, whenever they might present themselves. The spear, of course doubling as a throwing weapon if need be.

The silver dagger is more for show than for any real practical use (ie, lycanthropes, wights, wraiths, etc), as Beechum falls victim to his race's characteristic weakness for a finer thing or two. He can often be found twirling it between his fingers and thumb, grinning with pride and complacency. Don't get me wrong though, if such a fiend would happen to wander upon him, he'd whip that baby out as fast as you could say "roll for initiative."

In typical 1981 fashion, and as the title of this post implies, our brave group of adventurers took to:

spiking doors - both open and shut
brandishing 10' poles - as door openers and floor testers
collecting and testing strange unknown liquids - if you don't have any hirelings, just have the thief stick his pinky in it
minor dentistry - no comment
keeping the local rope maker in business - with about 200' of the stuff in our collective packs, we had no qualms to using it at every juncture, securing certain objects as well as a certain thief
tossing torches - as a distant light source and the occasional act of arson

We actually rolled very few dice, spending nearly all of our time exploring and having fun role-playing our crew. In fact up until the last few minutes of the session, the only rolls were for thieving skills, stonework checks by the our resident dwarf, and opposing STR checks, IIRC. In our full-on retreat to seemingly nowhere, we did have to make CON checks, which we all did....wshew!

We did however, spend a massive amount of time worrying about our (incorrectly) presumably-charmed/cursed thief friend, Cerran. As noted and commented on in the other blogs, we were darn sure he was out to get us (not of his own free will, mind you), and we were contemplating tieing him up (we did have the extra rope, that's for sure), knocking him out cold, or pushing/tripping him grade-school playground style over Beechum's back (wouldn't even really have to kneel for that move). It got so bad, that someone nearly accidentally let him drop into a very, very deep pit/hole!

But that's not quite a deed of lawful nature now is it? Sunniva?!? Feeling a tad goody-good, Beechum reminded a couple party members that although we were certain that Cerran was no longer on our side, he was still "one of us" and we needed to find a better way of dealing with him than watching him fall to his doom. But then again, he wasn't holding the rope now was he? MUUHAHAHAHA!!!!!

In the end things got so hairy that it didn't quite matter which side Cerran was on any longer. We needed to get the F outta there! So we did.

After the session was over, Jim answered some questions we had about certain points in the adventure, and also offered up quite a lot of info on the rest of his very cool creation. I will not reveal any of those details, but I will relay the interesting fact that Cerran was... in fact... absolutely... NOT charmed or cursed or otherwise affected in any way. He was just roleplaying a different take on something that had happened to him during the crawl, and totally hammed it up. OMG!

Well sadly his peculiar behavior was a bit costly, as he was the chosen one to be left behind. It was all about encumbrance and time, Cerran. Honest.

Oh and a massive amount of undead!

In summary, it was a total blast! Jim, thanks so much for creating, hosting and running us through your new project. It is very, very cool...creepy as hell, and a very fun crawl for anyone looking for something a little different than your average hack-n-slash adventure. I highly recommend it.

To my comrades, you guys were tons of fun! So we doomed everyone..big deal, right? Just think how much XP we're gonna get killing all of that crap. Job security, baby!

It was a pleasure to meet and adventure with each of you and I sincerely hope we can do it again sometime soon. Hit me up here or shoot me a message any time you like.

So a bugbear, a werewolf and 3 goblins walk into a bar...

2009-06-04T12:39:00.025-04:00

Ok, so there was no bar...not even a tavern. Well then let's just focus on the fact that Reaper has some new members of their Legendary Encounters Pre-painted Plastic minis line coming out this summer. Sweet!

I was over at Spike Page's awesome blog Ubiquitous Orcs, reading a post about Reaper's Warlord tabletop minis skirmish game being released in a new rev (version 2), and I decided it had been a little while since I visited Reaper's site, so I headed over there to see if there were any more details on the new version.

It was then that I saw these:

Bugbear

Werewolf

3 Goblins

"Yes, please. May I have another? And another? And another?"

Man, I freakin' love that Jeff Dee drawing. Always have. That lighthearted halfling looks like he just stopped in from the local frat toga party. Bottoms up!

Ok, so back to the minis: I really like Reaper minis, especially their current pre-painted line, as I am having trouble finding time to sit down and paint the buggers myself....ugh. I have tons of WotC's plastic D&D minis too, but I seem to favor the Reaper minis when they are an option. I've noted on a few occasions my usage of their LE plastic line figs. I especially have gotten some good mileage out of two of these figs for both a Human Cleric of Kord and a Elf Archery-style Ranger that I currently have as 4e characters. Heck, I even used those same two minis when my son and I played Dungeon! the boardgame.

My feelings on the pricing is somewhat mixed. I think $5.79 for 3 goblins is ok - $2 a piece for something you know you are getting, and can plan for your usage requirements isn't too bad.

The Bugbear at $4.99 is getting pricey (I do have a number of Bugbears from WotC - mostly the same guy though, IIRC) but the sculpt and paint job as shown on this new Reaper one looks pretty darn nice.

The Werewolf though, is the real tricky one, IMO. It's listed at $3.99 which unless this thing is sized along their current Minotaur or maybe even Troll's scaling, then that just seems too high to me. I guess I may be skewed a bit on that one, as I also have picked up various werewolves in Heroclix, Mage Knight, and other collectible miniature game used and/or commons bins at local gaming shops and conventions, spending anywhere from 15 cents a piece for the smaller ones to 70 cents in the bigger/nicer versions. Here's one of my cheapos:

Sure, I usually have to re-base those, mostly for cosmetic purposes, but still that makes this Reaper one a bit tough to take. We'll see though. Maybe when I see it for real-realz, I may just have to have it too.

Now, looking back on some older pics I saved off to my HD, I recall that Reaper had previously posted some future releases for the LE pre-paints, including gnolls, kobolds, a mummy, an ettin, a dwarf warrior, a war dog, a succubus, and even a type V demon... err... marilith... err... female demon. In fact they also already had goblins in that list. However those earlier posted guys sported a different paint job. Potential gang wars? Don't wear the wrong color, bro':

Oh, they also have a Giant Spider in the mix too:

But honestly I will likely pass on that one. It's showing a $3.99 price tag, and unless it really blows me away, I will probably stick with my Target $1 bin ones, or some new smaller ones (about half the size of the Target one) that I just snagged for 35 cents each. I bought four of those critters thanks to the advice of Mr. Moldvay:

I guess time will tell. First if these things actually are released or not (like the last "next" batch?), and secondly just how many gold pieces I'll hand over to get me some.

Now, back to the original premise...sorta: If you are ever in a bar/tavern/etc, especially once named after a certain wild animal of a certain color (ie: The Black Stag, The Red Lion, The Purple Worm...hehe), and you see a bugbear, a werewolf, and a trio of goblins come strolling through the front door, I leave you with three simple words of advice (again illustrated *awesomely* by the great Jeff Dee):

"Hit the deck!"

Jack Lantern-head: a D&D mini concept drawing by a 5 y.o.

2009-06-01T16:58:00.020-04:00

So my son is pretty enamored with D&D minis. Yeah you could say he kinda digs 'em. Hmmn....I wonder why. Well yesterday I overheard him from the other room describing with great enthusiasm to my wife the drawing he was working on at that moment. The part that really made me go "huh?" was when he said:

"Look Mama, doesn't it look like a mini? Look! I'm gonna go show Daddy. Wait 'til he see this guy!"
"Wow! That's great!" she said. "Daddy, you should see Bobby's drawing. He's been really concentrated working on it in here."

So he comes rushing into the den and flips the paper around, flashing this fiendish fellow right in my face:

"Woah!" I exclaimed. "Who in the world is *that*?!?!?"
"He's... uhm... Pumpkinhead." he replied. "No, wait!... He's the headless pumpkin!"
"Wow, that's awesome!" I told him. "But I'm not sure a pumpkin *can* be headless, can it?"
(Actually, it's a pretty interesting notion - a headless pumpkin. I should have let him run with it...ah well.)
"Oh yeah. Well what's those things? Ya'know, when we carve the pumpkins?" he asked.
"You mean 'jack-o'-lanterns'?" I inquired.
"Yeah! That's it! He's Jack Lantern-head!" he declared. "Or the Headless Pumpkin Guy...mini!"
(There we go. He got to come back around to the idea of headless pumpkin. Cool.)

As soon as I saw his picture, I couldn't help but think back to a few posts by some veteran bloggers Jeff Rients and James Maliszewski and a phenomenal artist Steve Zieser. You know them from their blogs Jeff's Gameblog, Grognardia, and Curmudgeons & Dragons, respectively.

Anyway, I did a quick search through their sites and found the posts I was thinking of. Here's a post Jeff made which features some pics of a similar looking dude...actually two similar looking dudes. First there's the Knight of Autumn Gate mini from Dreamblade:

Now if you took away this guy's sword and set his head was on fire he'd be a shoe-in for Marvel's Jack O'Lantern. But then... his head would be... well... on fire:

And then there's this pic of an OD&D bugbear, of which Jeff comments in his post as who/what the Dreamblade mini reminds him:

Pretty sweet, eh? Nice stuff there Jeff.

That last OD&D image there is reborn in a work posted at Curmudgeons & Dragons by that blog's own Steve Zieser, an amazing fantasy artist who has that sweet old-school flavor. Steve's work has been featured in such great retro-clone gaming works as the Basic Fantasy Roleplaying Game, the very cool Fight On! magazine, and some of the B/X combo-remake Labyrinth Lord's supplements, etc.

Here's Steve's cool pic from Halloween '08:

The last post is this one at Grognardia which James claims this illo by Erol Otus to be "hands down, one of the best depictions of any undead creature in any edition of Dungeons & Dragons.":

One of my faves there too, James. At least the face of this spectre has that carved jack-o'-lantern look to it. That along with the whole clawing-tree-branch, Michael-Jackson-Thriller-video-undead-dance-move-thing, is exactly why it reminded me of my son's creation.

Hey I think she may have been at my '80s themed 40th b-day party this past November...hmmn.

Anyway, three great posts there by three great gaming bloggers. /salute

Now I understand that one could look at my son's drawing and think yeah but what's that have to do with a D&D mini? Well look at the base. He specifically added that black base to the picture, just like the D&D minis that we play with have. Most of the time I try to steer him clear of the old lead figures, painted or not, just to be safe...sorta. Even though I played with them as a kid and I turned out ok...right?...RIGHT!?!?!? Anyway, when he and I play minis we use the plastic ones, mostly from WotC, which all have the black circular base. And so here it is in a full length shot:

Thus as of today, thanks to Bobby's awesome artwork, Jack Lantern-head the headless pumpkin guy is standing guard in my office at work, and I must say he's doing a fine job. In fact folks have been runnin' scared from my cube all day. What a bunch of wussies!

"BOO!"

"Irontooth": 2008 4e D&D villian or 1981 Judges Guild region?

2009-05-31T18:49:00.009-04:00

I was just perusing my blog list and saw James Mishler's latest post at his very cool blog Adventures in Gaming. He is selling some Judges Guild stuff that he recently unearthed from his pile of old-school gaming coolness.

I am having a very hard time not buying the lot. Must...be...strong! Must...not...cave!

Anyway, just looking through his list, I saw a number of JG items that I had not seen before. This particular item caught my eye - Portals of Irontooth:

Now I know that some of you are pure OD&D-ers and AD&D-ers, and that's cool. But I like to play 1981 game one day and the 2008 one the next. Sure I love no version more than my Moldvay/Cook/Marsh boxsets of B/X D&D, however I've also fallen pretty darn hard for 4e D&D too.

If you happen to be in the 4e camp (either just cracking it or already a vet) then you very likely have run across the name "Irontooth." If not, then you might wanna snag H1 - Keep on the Shadowfell:

You can get it free now in a pdf download they are providing (you know the whole "no more pdfs of our stuff" thing...meh) here.

Anyway, enough of the 4e module thing, and back to the JG stuff. Here's a snippet from the Portals of Irontooth describing a new magic item. Oooooooooooo...:

Iron Dragon's Tooth: Each adult or older Iron Dragon has two teeth which grant special magical abilities to beings who wear them on a chain around their neck next to their skin. Anyone so wearing a tooth gets a +3 to all saving throws versus Dragon's Breath and a -1 to each die of damage from Dragon's Breath. It should be noted that not all the Dragon's teeth have this power, only the two smallest ones.

I do have some Judges Guild modules and supplements, etc, but I would like to get some more. So maybe I'll hit James list again and see if I can talk myself into it. If you dig any of their stuff, you should hit it too. Grab that bag of gp and head on over there!

M1 Blizzard Pass: Basic D&D solo mod'n without the cool invisible ink pen

2009-05-27T16:35:00.028-04:00

So recently I've been blessed to have a regular local weekly game of D&D (4e in this particular case) for the past 4 months or so. It began as the WotC/RPGA sanctioned Delve Night series, in which I played an 8th level Elf Ranger (Archery Style) sniper... errr ... "striker." That then morphed into a custom campaign where I played a level 4 Bastard Sword wielding human Cleric of Kord (let's just say he liked to get up in there, ok?). This campaign was created and DM'd by the DM of the Delve Nights at my friendly local game store, Blue Dragon Games.

Now I'd usually link the store's website to that last phrase there, but ya see that's when "teh suck" struck.

"Uhm...ouch."

Out of the blue, the store closed. Boom. Blam. Done. No warning. In fact I got an email stating from the site's fourms stating that as of right then, they were closed for good. Wow.

I was stunned. Not only was this store a great source of gaming items, which I purchased quite frequently, but this was the place that got me back into playing real tabletop PnP D&D, no matter what version it might be. It just so happened to be about 5 miles from my home, which was the freakin' icing on the cake.

Now look, the economy blows... understood. We are especially feeling it in the metro Detroit area (ugh), so I won't comment on the store owner's reasons. I'm sure it has been tough making money, so my best wishes go out to the store owner in whatever direction he decides to go next.

The part that leads us to this blog entry is that even though I played every Sunday night with the same crew for 4 months, I have no idea on how to reach them, now that the common ground has been removed. Sadly, I never got their cell numbers, or even their last names...jeesh! I guess I just got spoiled on just calling up the store if need be to chat with the DM (he was an employee/manager/etc of the place) if there was ever a question of game on/off.

At any rate, until I either reconnect with the members of that group, or find a new local one, I am in severe need of some adventuring!

This past weekend I got a little fix from the Worldwide D&D Gameday - Monster Manual 2 event, but I had to drive about an hour and a half to the next closest gaming store that was running it. I did have a blast with the gameday, playing the part of the bravura tiefling warlord "Chance" and I think I'll post a little about my xp with that gutsy general. Additionally, I have been to that particular store before (Heroquest Comics), purchasing a fair amount of stuff, and they would be a great replacement for the other (now defunct) store, if they weren't so far away.

So...

Time to bust out the old solo/solitaire modules again. The terms solo and solitaire get a bit tricky with some of these old modules. Sometimes solo means a single player and a DM. Other times solo means solitaire, just you the player, no DM required. I'm talking here about those solitaire mods (even if they call them solo mods...ha!).

Looking back to last fall, I had some fun playing through the Basic D&D solitaire module BSOLO - Ghost of Lion Castle:

I never actually finished that one, so I could hit that again and see if my sucky Elf can get past a Giant Fire Beetle or a Rock Baboon before dying (twice) this time.

I also have tons of Tunnels & Trolls solitaire adventures, and those are all kinds of quick and easy fun, so maybe I'll run a couple of them.

However, first I think I wanna take a shot at the M1 - Blizzard Pass, the invisible ink Basic D&D mod by David Cook:

Now, as the blog post title states, I will be taking on this quest sans magic pen. Ugh! Some folks have said that a yellow highlighter can work, and my kids have some more modern invisible ink pens that they use to reveal sections and words in little Spider-man books etc, but I don't think those are gonna work. We'll see.

I do have 2, maybe 3, copies of this thing, but they are all in varying degrees of "revealed ink" status. So I need to kinda watch how I progress thru it, and try not to accidentally reveal a choice too soon. Wouldn't wanna spoil all the fun, right?

On that note, one very cool project that I found online is this one here, where some folks have put some serious effort into compiling (most of) the invisible entries into one big entity. That just might be the route I will have to take, at least for Blizzard Pass. Thanks to all of those who helped compile those notes. Very, very cool.

After MI I may have to keep the solo mode going for a bit, unless I find a good local group. If so, these beauties are all waiting in the wings:

M2 - Maze of the Riddling Minotaur:

XS2 - Thunderdelve Mountain (At least I think I have this one...man, I need to get organized!):

XSOLO - Lathan's Gold (Similar in style to Ghost of Lion Castle, IIRC):

CM5 - Mystery of the Snow Pearls (Ooooooo, a Companion Level mod...nice! - utilizing the Magic Viewer thingie too.):

MV1 - Midnight on Dagger Alley (1st ed AD&D here - using the viewer again to reveal parts of the map.):

Rage of the Rakasta (An early '90s D&D Game Box module, which is mostly spent exploring a palace. It can be played with or without a DM. In pure solitaire mode I don't think it's much more than "enter this room, fight this baddie, rinse repeat" but I could be totally wrong...never played it. I'm not sure if I have the stand-up figs with my copy...hhmnnn. Again the need to get organized.):**EDIT**: When I first posted this, I had this mod mixed up with another in the same series, In the Phantom's Wake. That mod takes place mostly on a boat. See below. **END EDIT**

In the Phantom's Wake (Another in that same early '90s D&D Game Box series. This is the one that features a boat floor plan. It's recommended for 4-6 players, (so not a solitaire mod...kinda), butit can be played with or without a DM....weird. So I guess a person could play solitaire, playing all 4-6 characters, with no DM. So that's like playing in accompanied solitary? Regardless, I'll still include it here because of that possibility. Both of these '90s D&D Game Box mods reportedly can be played with those Game Box rules, the Rules Cyclopedia, the Dragon Quest game, or even 2nd ed AD&D witha little fudging, I presume.):**EDIT**: Added this one here late, after checking them at home and realizing I mixed it up a bit with Rage of the Rakasta. See above. **END EDIT**

Wshew! Well that's quite a little bit of solo-play (man, that just sounds wrong) to be had, if need be. I've only messed with one or two of these mods listed above, and that was a loooooong time ago. I recall buying some of these, but never really needing to play them, as we always seemed to have the old kitchen table group back in '81 (and '82-'85 too). Even if sometimes the "group" meant a whopping two of us. A few others I aquired later in life, and just never really got around to playing them.

So that being the case, do any of ya'll have any favorites in this list, or any advice on which one(s) I might enjoy more? Do you favor the invisible ink over the magic viewer? Or is the good ol' "choose you own adventure" style of Ghost of Lion Castle still the best way to go? I think I'll start with Blizzard Pass and see if I dig the invisible ink thing. But if you have a better choice, please let me hear it.

Until then I'll be kickin' back enjoying a little "solo time" (still sounds just as bad, dunnit'?):

"Purple worm, purple worm..." - starring 1977 Monster Manual inspired Reaper minis

2009-05-18T16:08:00.016-04:00

Confess! You are either humming the Prince tune or you are trying very, very hard not to. It's ok, you can admit it.

Now for the half of you that haven't yet closed your browser window, I'll quickly move on to the true inspiration of this post. And no, it's not Morris Day and the Time, either. It's none other than that periwinkle wriggler himself, the Purple Worm.

Ok, remember this heart-warming little scene, by one of the (sadly late) greats, Mr. David Sutherland, from the back cover of the 1977 1st Edition AD&D Monster Manual?:

Of course you do.

Well as I seemingly can't stop dorking around with these things, here's another very simplified remake of an old masterpiece of the vintage D&D/AD&D era. This time we watch the scene unfold as our fuchsia fiend moves in on some (apparently completely) unsuspecting dorks... err... orcs:

These little green men are Reaper's orcs, from their Legendary Encounter pre-painted series. As noted before, and seen in a few different prior posts here, I really like these Reaper minis. I have been using them for two current tabletop characters of mine, an Elf Ranger (archery style) and a Human Cleric of Kord. I feel that in most cases they have better sculpts and paint jobs than comparable current offerings from WotC. I still have tons of the WotC figs, and I will keep buying them, but I really like these Reaper minis.

Now for a direct comparison of Reaper vs WotC, in regards to worms of the violet variety, here's a shot of the WotC version appearing ready to chow down on the Reaper version:

Sorry for the difference in lighting there, but different days, different shadows, etc. I just take these pics on the kitchen table (it just seems to fit the "back in '81" theme, ya'know?...ha!), and whatever light I get, I just deal with it.

Anyway, I actually really like the WotC worm too. I think it has a completely different vibe to it. IMO, it looks more Alien than D&D. The size difference could be a deciding factor, but I choose not to go down the "my purple worm is bigger than your purple worm" road. Just not gonna do it. Aw man, I just did, didn't I?

Either way, I like them both and would happily use either one of them on the tabletop, if the adventure called for it. However, for the representation of the old MM back-cover shot, I figured I'd go with the worm that gives me more of an old-school feel, and that would have to be the Reaper mini.

Speaking of old-school feel with new minis, Otherworld Miniatures has (or had) an amazing Purple Worm mini, along with all of the rest of their very cool line of figs. Jeff Reints of Jeff's Gameblog posted on that mini a while back, with this pic along the same lines of that MM back-cover (I hope it's ok to re-post that pic here, Jeff - it's a copy, not a link to your site, so hope that avoids any bandwidth issues):

That shot really reminds me more of the entry on the Purple Worm inside the pages of the old MM. Maybe it's a tail thing...dunno. Check it out:

I do like the fact that Otherworld's worm has the tail included, but IMO the graphic of the work busting out of the ground in the Reaper and WotC versions is even more cool. Diana, Hank, Eric and Presto seem to be diggin' it too:

"Hewwweeeeee!"

Reaper does have an unpainted metal version that seems to cover the best of both worlds in those regards. Here is a shot of that:

However at $27.49 for that bad boy (according to that link), I think I'd have to pass on that, as cool as it does look.

And finally for the real penny-pinchers out there, there's always this option:

that "promo" Silver Dragon mini and some other sterling wyrms

2009-05-14T11:18:00.029-04:00

I've been trying to stick with the (very) early '80s artwork in these recent posts (Otus, Dee, Roslof, etc), but man, I think I may have to turn in my pro-googler membership card after today's quest. I couldn't find a silver dragon by any of the real old-schoolers. I do like this work by Todd Lockwood though, so I guess I'll roll with that.

** EDIT **
Well, until I find a better scan or do it myself, here's what I wanted in the first place. I seriously couldn't find this darn thing online....jeesh! Ah well, here's Sutherland's Silver Dragon from the 1st ed AD&D Monster Manual (RE-EDITED: no longer in a horrendous yellow-orange hue):

Draco Nobilis Argentum

** END EDIT (and END RE-EDIT) **

Anyway, recently Jay asked in a comment about the Best Buy exclusive silver dragon mini that came with my Dungeons & Dragons: Complete Series DVD box set (the animated show), which I mentioned in this previous post on various Green Dragon minis.

I actually snagged the box set back when it came out, from a local Best Buy. They often have exclusive stuff with their box sets and special edition DVD releases. In this particular case the packaging included a clear plastic section sticky-tack'd to the top of the DVD box, containing this little silver dragon mini. It was labeled as a Best Buy exclusive fig. I've seen the box set at Best Buy recently, but the packaging is new. It is now in a black box (mine is the older red one) and this new version does not have the mini included. Weird.

At any rate, Jay asked for a pic of it, and I actually found one in my folder of shots I took when I was recently comparing some dragon minis (among other creatures) from various companies. Here's one I took of the Best Buy mini on the left compared to WotC's Young Silver Dragon from the Dungeons of Dread set...oh and that crazy old dude in the bathrobe snuck into the shot too:

If you've been following for a bit around these parts, you might recall that I've shown a couple shots of that bigger Young Silver a while back in a post about a heavily-modified game of Crossbows & Catapults with my son.

Regardless, you may have also seen them around in your gaming circles as WotC has released a number of silver dragons, including these beasts:

the Young Silver Dragon shown above in my pic:

the Large Silver Dragon from the Archfiends set:

the Medium Silver Dragon from the Underdark set:

Now the Best Buy mini, which is labeled on the bottom of the fig as "Knights of the Silver Dragon" 2004, was supposedly a promo for the young reader book series of the same name. As far as I can tell, and as you can see from the pics, it is just a renamed/relabeled version of the Underdark set's Medium Silver Dragon.

Googling like an archfiend myself, I also found a few more comparison shots of the Large Silver vs the promo mini. This pic is from Merric's D&D minis site, in the promos section:

I highly recommend Merric's site for some very nice info and pics on WotC's D&D figs.

Additionally, as a source of some of the other links/pics above, check out Paizo.com for some other good minis pics, stats, and other cool info. They are also a great resource for some awesome RPG loot in general. Just be prepared to part with those gold pieces...

"Come'on, I'm good for it. This is a Bag of Holding, dude!"

Jeff Dee's "Land of Umber Hulk Confusion" drawing: yep, more old lead minis stuff

2009-05-13T09:15:00.015-04:00

"It's yet another in a long series of diversions in an attempt to avoid responsibility" - Chris Knight, 1985

As true as that description by one of my all-time fave characters in one of my all-time fave movies may be, this crap is still a lot of fun.

Here's a real cool drawing by Jeff Dee, from the pages of 1980's TSR AD&D module C2 The Ghost Tower of Inverness, of an umber hulk seemingly putting "the whammy" on some poor sap:

And here's me dorking around with some minis again, doing a very minimalistic representation of that scene:

The umber hulk fig is one of my favorites from the old collection, a Grenadier blister pack which contained this Umber Hulk and a Xorn. My Xorn still has his 3rd arm as a separate entity. In other words, I never attached the darn thing. Ah well, another project for another day.

The "poor sap" in my shot is the Fighter with Sword mini from the 1983 AD&D Fighters, Rangers & Paladins box set, a set which has rewarded me over and over again.

You may notice, from the back of the TSR box that this guy bears a strikingly resemblance to a popular TSR iconic(?) fighter. Here he is cropped from that back-of-the-box pic:

And here he is gracing the cover of 1986's The Book of Lairs, a book of short adventures by TSR for AD&D:

His name escapes me...anyone? How 'bout you there big fella?

"Huh?"

Trampier's "Giant Frog vs (insert tiny humanoid-ish type here) " drawing: more lead minis reenactments

2009-05-12T10:17:00.013-04:00

So lately I've been dorkin' around with some old school D&D/AD&D illos, trying to recreate the scenes depicted in them (in very, very simple form) using old lead minis, newer plastic minis, kid's toys, etc. Well this one here basically slapped me in the face and said "Hey punk, recreate this!"

Yep, it's a goofy one alright. A nice little ditty though, by Dave Trampier, from the 1st ed AD&D Player's Handbook, in the spells section.

This kooky pic has befuddled even the most 'nardish grognards (and BTW, that's a compliment fellas...hehe). The discussion over there at GROGNARDIA covers every angle from what type of creature the little dude on the right actually is (elf, halfling, hobbit, gnome, pixie, brownie, etc) to what the actual scene is supposedly representing (temporal stasis, time stop, shape change, etc). The post and it's comments are a very fun read, and I highly recommend you check it out.

At any rate, for the purposes of this dorky little post here, let's just say some little generic demi-human thug just said some very nasty things about a certain giant frog's mother. Here's some fun I had reenacting the scene with a Giant Frog mini (love those oxymorons) from the WotC D&D Deathknell series and a heavily used and severely abused old lead Halfling Thief from the Grenadier Thieves box set from their AD&D Solid Gold Line:

Sadly, the frog in my scene isn't quite the pouncer, but he certainly looks like he's diggin' that halfling... err... pixie... err ...whatever.

"Pucker up, buttercup!"

Three Green Dragons: Papa, Mama and Baby?

2009-05-11T12:56:00.009-04:00

As noted at the end of a recent post here on some Papo figs (dragons and various goblinoids & humanoids), I snagged a couple other dragons, including Papo versions and other makes too.

Here's a shot of two of the newest wyrms in my growing collection, alongside one I've had for a while now:

So left->center->right we have:

(L) WotC's D&D Minis Starter Set Young Green Dragon
(C) Papo's Winged Green Dragon with Flame
(R) Safari's Green Dragon

I've had the WotC little guy there on the left ever since the starter set came out, but the Papo and the Safari are recent buys. They are great prices too, like $5 - $6 or so. IMO, that's quite a deal. I'm sure they can be had even cheaper if you search online, but I just grabbed them from a local doll/toy-soldier shop. Gotta support the local scene, ya'know?

Also, as I mentioned in my chat about the "breathless" Papo Blue Dragon, I plan on doing a little surgery on this Papo Green, de-flaming him. After all this is D&D, where any respectable Green Dragon breathes chlorine gas, not fire. Of course certain other applications and various literary works would disagree, but for the uses this mini will see, he needs to lose the flames.

I am already in search of a decent little plastic representation of a lightning bolt for my Papo Blue mod, and now it looks like that quest just grew to include some gaseous form...ewwww.

Next will be the major mod of painting a (2nd) Papo Red with some black-ish acrylics, which will lead to the search for some dripping, burning acid breath mod.

Man, this is getting dangerous!

Biggie-sized! - a few old lead Giants (and other big folk)

2009-05-08T12:56:00.021-04:00

I've been diggin' through some old minis lately. That exercise along with and a recent suggestion by Jay at Spell Card of using a Papo Dwarf King mini as a surrogate Fire Giant got me thinking it was time to post some old late-'70s/early-'80s lead giants and other biggie-sized minis, from Grenadier, Ral Partha, etc.

So let's begin with a group shot taken at last year's Lumberjack-Con:

Can't recall without peeking, but I believe that lineup is from left-to-right a Grenadier(?) Frost Giant, a Ral Partha Firbolg, and a Ral Partha Fire Giant.

* EDIT *
Turns out I wasn't too far off on the makers of these guys. Upon checking them at home, here's the real deal:

The guy on the left is actually a Ral Partha Hill Giant (version 2) from 1977...yikes!
I was correct on the other two dudes.

* END EDIT *

Here's a real nice paint job (IMO) by Herb the bitter that I saw over at CoolMiniOrNot.com of that Firbolg mini:

Very, very cool!

Next up, some recent Mall Cop applicants:

Ok, now I really need a cheat-sheet. Forgive me for any misinformation here, but I think in the shot above the polite fellow on the left is a Ral Partha Ogre, a Ral Partha Bear-rider Dwarf is the homey in the center, and on the right requesting a high-five we have a Grenadier Ape...err something. I will check these when I get home and edit things as needed here to provide better information on these figs.

* EDIT *
More corrections here, after checking them at home:

The Ogre on the left is indeed an Ogre, but he is more correctly an Ogre Berserker by Grenadier (1988).
The Bear-rider in the middle is actually a Dwarf Ursine Cavalry with Axe from Grenadier (1989) which was (as Jeff Rients from Jeff's Gameblog pondered...or possibly teased?...hehe... in the comments of this post) part of their Fantasy Warriors sets. I know I only have one of them, but I also know where I can get more, so a tabletop skirmish with a legion of bear-riders may be in my future.
The ape on the right is a total unknown for me at this point. The bottom of the fig is basically unreadable. I think it says '77 and #122, but that's all I can make out. I could swear I just saw this fig on some old lead minis site, but I can't find it now. Ah well. If anyone knows what it is, please shout out so I can get back to sleeping at night, ok? Thanks.

* END EDIT *

For purposes of scale, here's a couple pics of the Fire Giant and the Frost(?) *EDIT* Hill Giant hangin' out with my (apparent) recent favorite posers from the Reaper Legendary Encounter Pre-painted Plastics line:
Most of these are all 2nd-hand figs, painted (if at all) by some other gamers of days past, which I either inherited from my old PnP buddies, or snagged at different times in the past from various shops' used-RPG sections and other forgotten backroom bins. "One man's trash..."

I may just leave them as they are, as sometimes those old-school paint jobs ...good, bad or just plain horrible... can better set that "back in '81" mood, standing proud atop the kitchen table in all of their Testors glory. But I'm thinking I'd like to try to clean them up and do some re-paints, if I ever find the time. I have tons of old minis in that "someday I'm gonna paint" pile, so these will have to get in line. I have a sneaky feeling, however, that a couple of these whoppers just might "take cuts."

Throwing those Erol Otus -esque figures a bone

2009-05-07T16:49:00.011-04:00

My son really digs his Plasma Kreaps. And since we recently added those cheapo rubber/plastic Erol Otus -ish figs to our arsenal of cool crap to dork around with, he frequently creates some pretty fun scenes with them.

The other day he got all into tidying them up and packing them back into their original plasma, then stuffing that into their crate/egg, and finally stacking up the crates. I'm not sure where he gets this rare "must...clean...up" notion from, but when he does, he runs with it.

At any rate, it kinda seemed like he was done playing with them, and was on to something else, when I made a trip from the den/office to the kitchen for a beverage. He saw me coming and exclaimed,

"Daddy! Watch out for the crazy guys! They're all killin' the skeleton! Look!!!"

Now, although I did feel a slight urge to explain that the skeleton wasn't truly alive to begin with, but the time just didn't seem right to go into a whole dissertation on what it meant to be "undead." There's also that lesson on using bludgeoning weapons...then again, that depends on which edition you're playing...so I let that one slide too.

Anyway, I stopped in my tracks and stared open-jawed at the hideous sight of all four of these monstrosities muching away at our poor old boney friend.

Tonight's meal features...

Torso'd Salad:

Honey-glazed Hand:

Skulloped Potatoes:

and a slice of Coconut Cream Thigh:

So, anyone for seconds?

a breathless Blue Dragon, a short-staffed Ogrillion and a non-green sword-wielding Troll?

2009-05-06T10:36:00.034-04:00

"I'm so confused..."

Allow me to explain.

As recently witnessed, I have failed my save vs. The Papo Pit, also known as the following aliases: The Safari Snare, The Schleich Seduction, The Target Tangle, and sometimes even The Dollar-Store Deadfall.

After (subconsciously ;^]) looting the idea from Christopher B at A Rust Monster Ate My Sword and posing the old-school-ish Red Dragon with some even older-school lead figs, I decided I needed more of these "toys."

So I made my way to a local miniatures shop (models, games, terrain, etc) and initially added the Papo Blue Dragon (winged and sans fire-breath, in this case), and the Papo Ork (which is...well...an "orc"). He actually kinda looks a little Ogre-ish to me, or maybe even more so Ogrillion or Orog, but whatever. Here he is chillin' with a veteran lead Druid/Shaman/WildMage/Wizzie/etc (info on the skull-topped walking-stick later):

I will most likely use him for an oversized Ogre, or some orc/ogre/goblin deity, like this Jeff Dee rendering of Maglubiyet:

Regardless, this "Ork" fig was in their clearance bin (50% off) because the fork at the top of his forked-wooden-staff/stick was broken off. Big whoop! I mean, first off these figs were priced at $5 (or less) anyway at that shop, so at $2.50, I couldn't say no to the big green guy. Here's his broken shaft (ouch!):

And here's the quick little mod my son and I came up with for an impromtu photo op:

I won't permanently affix that skull, as that's the head to the Plasma Kreaps Ghoul (basically a very cool winged skellie), and we like that fig way too much to eternally behead him. At any rate, it's a thought starter and for some pics it's kinda works.

Next up, the fire-breath-less Blue Dragon fig. I'm not sure if it was another fig-injury or not, but the shop wouldn't take clearance price on this particular fig. I tried to tell them that it was "missing" the fire-breath (as other Blues in the same shop had it spewing from their mouths) but it wasn't going to happen. So I just snagged it anyway at $5.24 or whatever. See, I was gonna cut off the flames from a normal Blue anyway, as we all know (heck even my 5 y.o. son knows) that Blue Dragons breathe lightning, not fire. I guess I could have bought a normal Blue fig, and saved the flames for some other mod, but whatever...this way I didn't have to cut the poor cerulean wyrm. Here's a closeup of him/her in all his/her flamelessness:

Now I just need to find a cool plastic/rubber bolt of lightning to glue to the back of it's throat. Any ideas on where I can find one?

Paired up here with the original Red in this shot, you can see their slight differences, including big wings vs tiny wings and flames vs no-flames:

Now for some comparisons between these Papo Dragons and some offerings from the WotC line of D&D minis. Again, I don't have the massive, colossal, gargantuan, just plain huuuuuuge WotC Dragon minis to compare, but then again $40-$300 vs $5.24 isn't a fair fight to begin with, eh? Anyway here's some side-by-sides of the Papo Dragons vs WotC Basic Game and Against the Giants boosters Dragons:

As much as I am totally pimping these Papo Dragons for some old-school feel, I must say I do also like this new WotC Red from the AtG boosters. It has a very proud look to it, which seems right. However in the end the Papo fig wins outright for me. It just hits me too hard in the Moldvay box set gut. I will do the reverse mix here for a sec though and throw in the new WotC Dragon vs my old 1983 TSR "Fighter with Platemail" from their Fighters, Rangers & Paladins box set:

Still lingering in the local shop, I couldn't leave without snagging this guy for $2 or $3...can't recall. Papo calls him a Troll with Sword, and that might possibly be in the Three Billy Goats Gruff "mean dude under the bridge" theme, but it's certainly not the stinky, green, pointy nose, must-use-acid-or-fire type that the term "Troll" conjures for me (and you I presume).

Names aside, I dig this little Papo Troll (uhm ...with sword). I think in an old-school themed game, he could play the part of some generic brute. He has a look that to me seems to be a mix of ogre, orc, hobgoblin, and maybe even a tad bugbearish ...sorta ...dunno. He looks fun though, especially with that shortsword jabbing ya in the face. Doink!

Here's a closeup of that ugly mug:

And one more shot of him going toe-toe with that venerable Shaman/Druid/humma-humma from the earlier "Ork vs Oldguy" scene:

Ok, one final fig before I left the local shop a little lighter in the gold pieces bag. This guy is what Papo calls a Dwarf King, but as Jay suggested in this comment to this post over at Grognardia, I may use him as a Fire Giant. BTW, it appears from Jay's comments and links to pics of his figs, that he tends to dig the Reaper minis too, especially the one I use a lot for my 4e Cleric of Kord and other holy warrior stand-ins in games and pics...cool! Anyway, I'd say this Papo Dwarf King could also be used as some Dwarven God, Aspect of Moradin, etc. but I kinda like Jay's Fire Giant angle. Maybe add a little custom paint job, mixing in some blackened skin look, etc. Dunno. Here's a shot of him just about to cleave our (apparent) undefeated world champ, "Old Guy in Bathrob with Cane" in half:

Ah well, toys they truly are, but useful props in future games I hope they will someday become.

BTW, I also snagged a few others from another shop (some of which I bought for trying some mods and paint jobs), but have yet to take pics of them, so I'll save them for another post. Fun!

"Invisible Stalker" lead mini by Grenadier: Now where'd I put that darn thing?

2009-05-04T17:11:00.008-04:00

Ah-ha! There it is...

Backstory:
So I took my son to a local gaming convention this past weekend: MichiCon 2009. It was held on the campus of Oakland University, here in Michigan, a pretty common spot for some of these local gaming/comic cons (well, besides the Motor City Comic Con...that's been in Novi, Mi for a number of years now).

At any rate, these guys (Metro Detroit Gamers) put on some nice get-downs, IMO. They are usually pretty quaint, but they had a particularly nice offering of tabletop fun this time around. There were several setups of wargames in some gaming systems I had not heard of, a couple rooms of RPGing (a Savage Worlds version of the TV show "Heroes" was one that stood out), and a few decent vendor booths to which I immediately flocked.

Overall we had a great time. My son got to see some pretty heavy duty miniature gaming in action, and we also got some pretty decent loot, and most of it was at a very nice (cheap) price. I may post some of it in a separate post, as some of you might dig a few specific items. But for now I'll just throw this dude some blog-love....ewwwwww!

Here's a little better shot of the intense and intricate detailing on this "Invisible Stalker" fig by Grenadier:

Silly? Yes. Fun? Sorta. Gotta have? Not really. Wanna have? Yep!

$1 later and he was mine. That may sound stupid to pay a buck for a little splat of lead... ok you're right, it is stupid. Still I've spent $1 in many, much more stupid, ways before, so I figured WTF?

See, I already have Grenadier's 1988(?) Comedy Lords box set in my collection, and allegedly this Invisible Stalker fig was a special free bonus fig? Dunno. I truly don't recall that being the case, but I found that claim as I was googling it. So as we all know, everything on "the internets" is true, so there we have it.

** EDIT **
I checked my own box set and insert sheet when I got home tonight, and it most certainly does state "SPECIAL BONUS INVISIBLE STALKER FIGURE" right there on the sheet, although it doesn't show this little base/fig slab that I pictured in the post here....weird.

It's seeming more and more familiar, as I think I read that a while back when I got this set, and just figured that it was a joke (ie, no figure, just that statement). It wasn't until I saw it at the con this past weekend that it started to jive.

Regardless, I'm glad to actually have it now, so I can box it with the rest of the set. Cool!

See?, the internets really don't lie. Really!
** END EDIT **

Anyway, here's a shot of the Comedy Lords box cover:

And here's the insert sheet showing the figs:

I don't recall the exact naming of each fig there, and I don't have my box/sheet in front of me at the moment, so I'll save that listing for another post or for a late edit. They do include some along the lines of "Halfling in Fullplate," "Half-an-Elf," "107th level Fighter," and "Napoleon Bony-Parts," to name a few. Again, those names may not be exact...I just can't remember and I'm tired of googling...ha!

** EDIT **

Seeing how I checked the insert sheet in my box set when I got home (see above edit), I figured I'd add the list of fig names, according to that insert sheet. Here they are, top row L->R, then bottom row L->R:

Half Orc Slime
Napoleon Boneyparts
Undead Gamer/Game Board/Undead Gamer
Half Elf
Armored Idiot

F19 Pegasus Fighter Bomber
Wererat
Halfling in Full Plate
107th Level Fighter, etc.
Pizza Deliveryman

** END EDIT **

Anyway, some of these are very funny and cool, others are kinda just...well...dorky. I snagged this box a while back in some clearance sale, so maybe the "Invisible Stalker" was missing from the box set that I bought, or maybe he's still hiding in the foam packaging....hhmnn.....

Oh Stalker.....where are you?.....Stalker? STALKER!

                                                            
You hit the invisible stalker.                              
You hit the invisible stalker!                              
You hit the invisible stalker!                              
The invisible stalker hits!                                 
You die...

"Tarantella" as drawn by Willingham - yeah that's the ticket!

2009-05-01T12:35:00.014-04:00

When I posted those pics of some cheap rubber figurines that reminded me of the artistic style of the great Erol Otus, I ended with this scene where a Paladin (at least that's what he is in this particluar scene) was facing off against a giant hideous spider:

The keen eye of Grognardia's James Maliszewski put my spell-checker to shame in noticing my caption in which the Paladin implores "Taste my holy steel, *fowl* arachnid!"

Even after fact, I decided to leave in that flub, as James' vision of a "chicken-spider" still makes me giggle, even just typing about it here.

At any rate, I didn't really have a good Otus pic to pair up with that shot, but I just liked it, so I bunched it the others there. Well it was kina eating at me...I mean, I knew there must be an old-school D&D illustration somewhere, by one of the greats of that time...but where, and by whom?

Tried googling. Failed. Broke out some of the old tomes. Ah-ha! There it was. And so here it is, paired with a reverse-image of my original pic...a wonderful little sketch by the incredible Bill Willingham of a Tarantella:

If that creature name doesn't ring any bells, it may just compell you to dance. Check out it's description in the Monsters section of my favorite D&D ruleset, Moldvay's Basic D&D box set, page B43 (please excuse the photo, it's all I could find, and I don't have a scanner or camera on hand at the moment...oh and I am far too lazy to type it all in here by hand):

So who's dancing? Yeah, me too...for 2d6 turns, as the dreaded Tarantella utters in Tarantellaic (or is that Tarantallaese?), "Bailamos, you *fowl* humanoids!"

Dungeon! - Fantasy Boardgame: an old-school vet vs a 5 y.o. newb

2009-04-30T10:49:00.015-04:00

The time had come to introduce my boy to the wonderful world of Dungeon! the boardgame. He had been eyeing the box and he's been progressing nicely through many of my other old D&D related games and toys, so why not Dungeon!... the uhm ... fantasy boardgame.

So after taking a little time to review the rules (hey! it's been a long frakkin' time since I saddled up to this one), and taking a long walk down memory lane with the artwork on the board, the cards, and in the rules, I did my best to explain these rules to a boy who anxiously looked ready to solo The Temple of Elemental Evil itself:

Don't ask about the yellow duck hand-puppet...I guess it's part of some bizarre dice-rolling ritual.

One quick shot of some pure Erol Otus coolness in the pages of those rules:

We chose to play the Basic version of the game for now. Once he gets the hang of it, he'll no doubt wish to play one of the additional classes in the Expert version. Heck, he was thumbing through the Spell cards (expert version, Wizard class) while I was wasting our precious playing time reading rules. My fellow old-school gamers would have my head for that diversion. Rules-shmules! Oh the humanity!

Anyway, going the basic route, I let him pick his class. He liked the sound of being "better at killing crap" much more than he did being an "improved secret door finder." Silly boy.

So he took the Hero (blue pawn), and I chose the Elf (green pawn) and we were off to the Main Staircase/Start. Oh he also said that he'd take the blue one, because blue is his favorite color. In reality, red and brown (but mostly red) are his favorite colors. But I willingly suspended my disbelief. After all, we were playing Dungeon!... the "Fantasy" Boardgame, right?

Actually about half way through the game, I thought we needed a prop upgrade. So I snagged the two Reaper minis I've been using a lot lately in some 4e sessions (one of them for my current 5th level Cleric of Kord, and the other for my current 8th level Ranger). These two fig actually made perfect sense for use in place of the blue Hero pawn and the green Elf pawn. Bam! Cool game just got cooler.

At any rate, we took turns taking the lead, piling up our gp total with sweet treasure, while beating the smack out of the baddies. He luckily looted a "Secret Door" card, so he basically instantly became my Elf...just better. Bah!

Fate certainly didn't help me out either vs some Green Slime, as captured here with a pair of 1's:

I must say once he started to pile up the treasure, and we both were about to the midpoint of the 10,000 gp required to win, he developed a pretty brash strategy of dropping his buffing loot (+1 sword, secret door card, etc), in favor of keeping the highest gp worth loot. He took some major risks in doing so, and several times felt the pain of the monsters' attacks. However, we both passed 10k gold and beat-feet back to the beginning - with the 10k gold, whomever got back first would win.

Well, he had a clear shot back, all except for a secret door blocking his way. Without his cool "Secret Door" card, which fell victim to his boldness, he sat there for quite some time failing his rolls, and thus not being able to progress.

I on the other hand was a master secret door finder but I had to get past a few baddies on my way back to start. This was mainly due to being "slid" to a different level as part of a trap that tripped in one of the rooms. It turns out my Elf wasn't very skilled at taking on either of these two dorks, the Evil Wizard and the Black Pudding:

See that tiny little dash "-" there after the word Elf on those cards? Yeah that means I can't kill them. WTF?!?!?!?

I had no other way I could go to make it back to the beginning, so it was just a matter of time before my son put the final smackdown on me. And that he most surely and most triumphantly did, taking all of the glory and all of the loot!:

Guess who's lined up to beat sorry ol' Daddy next? You guessed it...

Erol Otus -ish plastic/rubber figures

2009-04-29T14:22:00.023-04:00

For whatever reason when I saw these things in a local Toy/Hobby/Pools store (pools? you say?...yeah, me too...dunno but they sell outdoor pool supplies there too), the first word that popped into my head was Otus.

They aren't really that close to these incredible Erol Otus illustrations referenced in this post, but at least to me, they remind me of his organic style...one which I absolutely love. IMO, he's one of the reasons that so many young kids were able to let loose the binds of reality while playing D&D, and allow their minds to so easily conjure up such vivid imagery.

Some people (as wrong as they may be) don't care very much for Otus' art. I (displaying a much improved opinion...hehe) disagree with them. Erol Otus plain rocks! Always has - always will. Obviously I jest on the opinion labeling, as everyone is entitled to their own. Heck I dig Erol Otus and Jeff Dee. It seems a lot of folks like one but not the other. To me, they are both amazing different stylists, each with his own flavor and strengths. I just like it all, I guess.

At any rate, here are few more shots of these kooky looking beasts, doing battle with a couple of my Reaper figs, and some Erol Otus art that I think they imitate to some degree. BTW, I posed them and snapped the pics without any particular drawing/painting in mind. With a little better forethought on my part, I might have tried to mimic the actual artwork for better comparisons. Ah well, maybe next time.

Anyway, as a wise little old dude once said...
"Fear not, Ranger..."

"...Cavalier..."

It may seem kinda silly (in fact it may actually *be* kinda silly) for a grown man to buy, yet alone pose, some crazy looking, distorted, almost mutated plastic and rubber dinosaur-ish toys, not to mention the fact that I ... err... *he* would then take pictures of these scenes. However, I think they're pretty sweet, and they definitely remind me of some of Mr. Otus' amazing work. I actually hope to put these things into play someday soon, populating some old-school flavored dungeon crawl with them.

Oh, and they were less than a buck a piece...how could I say no?

And I almost forgot this one, from Target's $1 bins in the front of the store. Not necessarily Erol Otus inspired, but a nice huge spider for our hero to smite:

"Taste my holy steel, fowl arachnid!"

Willingham's "Dragon vs Party" scene: reenacted with lead minis and a plastic dragon

2009-04-28T16:32:00.017-04:00

One of my all-time favorite D&D illustrations...I absolutely love that drawing by Bill Willingham.

Anyway, a little back story: A little over a week ago, we took an extended weekend up to Frankemuth ("Michigan's Little Bavaria") for a little family getaway. During our stay, one of the many fun little downtown and/or River Place shops we checked out was the Frankenmuth Toy Company. My son and I checked out the Papo figurines, of which they had plenty.

After an initial "pass" on a purchase of any of these very nice figs, some uncannily coincidental blog posting/replying over at Grognardia (awesome blog BTW, but ya'll already know that), and finally an early morning revalation by my son and I, we headed back to the toy shop to snag a fig or two.

For reference and just plain fun, I'll quote myself, quoting my son, along with quoting myself some more:

"My son awoke this morn and the first words out of his mouth were "Daddy, I was just dreaming about those figures and stuff at that toy store!". I said, "Hey, me too!"

Anyway, my son had his eyes on their Battering Ram prop for some future improvised employment in our Crossbow & Catapults sessions:

...while I spied their Red Dragon fig:

That is one smooth looking Red Dragon, right? I mean, sure it may not be the $80 "Colossal" version from WotC, but I actually like this guy better. He (or she) just has that cool old-school look, that screams "Use me with your old lead minis, you scrawny human!"

So I did.

Here's a little reenactment of that Willingham scene, using some of my old TSR lead minis and this cool ass Papo Red Dragon:

First the awesome Willingham work:

And my simple rendition:

Dorky, yet fun!

*****
EDIT:
As it turns out, I very likely totally stole this idea from Christopher B and his very cool blog A Rust Monster Ate My Sword. He saw a similar cheap-yet-cool plastic dragon fig and thought he'd like to bust out some old lead figs and recreate the Willingham scene. He just never really got around to it...ha! At any rate, here I thought I had some great original idea, and as it turns out, I probably just read his post a while back and then forgot all about it. So, props to Christopher B for a great idea! Of course I do claim some small thread of originality in the actual composition of the figs...hehe. I think I got them pretty darn close to the original. So props to me too....hahahaha!

BTW, if you haven't already, go visit A Rust Monster Ate My Sword. It is a rockin' blog, filled with great ideas you can plunder for your own posts. (just kidding, bud. ;>])

I do totally dig his blog, though. Check it out fo' sho'!
*****

Gonna paint me some old lead minis...pig-faced Orcs to be exact.

2009-04-23T16:37:00.038-04:00

So, in the midst of some recent plastic minis vs lead figs comparison, I got a hankerin' to paint me some minis again. Now it's been a looooooonnnnnnnggggg time since I've done this (like 1983 or so), so I have a feeling the (re)learning curve could be mighty steep. Those brain cells are just a (non)memory now.

I have tons of these bad boys from "back in..." err.... yeah. In the heaping pile of lead that used to rule the kitchen table, I must admit that only a small percentage of my old lead minis are actually painted. I've shown a couple of them here in some previous posts, but I have tons of others, many that never got any paint slapped on 'em. As witnessed recently in the case of the burgular here.

At any rate, I think I'm gonna bust out some acrylics and see if I enjoy this long lost hobby as much as I hope I will. Maybe this crotchety old timer doesn't have the patience to pull this off - maybe he does. We'll see.

I'm think I'm gonna start with some pig-faced Orcs from the TSR AD&D line of 1983, in this wonderful box set named "Monster Tribes":

Here's the back, showing all the included figs:

The Orcs are the best of this bunch, IMO. They are the perfect pig-nosed variety we all loved back then. They're pretty similar to the ones available from Otherworld Miniatures, which are freakin' awesome, and I want some...NOW! Their Orc collection is here. And here's some shots of the Otherworld figs, from their gallery, painted very nicely by various skilled folks:

O1c - Pig-faced Orc with Bardiche, painted by Richard Scott

O4 - Pig-faced Orc Warband, painted by Kep Pump

and Pig-faced Orcwife, painted by Chris FitzPatrick:
Nice rack(s)! WTF?!?!?

Anyway, before I drop some major cash and impulse-buy nearly everything Otherworld makes (OMG! their stuff is nice), I figured I better just try painting some of the figs I already have... make sure I can even pull this off, ya'know?

So along with the TSR Monster Tribes box pictured up above, I still have many figs in the following sets that need paint too.

Some of those figs in my recent comparison were from this Fighter, Rangers & Paladins set:

This Specialists set here is the origin of my favorite Pally fig. I know many other folks dug that Paladin fig too.

Here's the Thieves set from which that bag-toting-burgular fig hails.... err sneaks. The sheet names him "Thief-sack"...ha!

Dig the paint jobs on this "Fighting Men" set (3rd pic here)....very nice! I believe those are painted by someone at dndlead.com. His/her site is freakin awesome! Check it out, and maybe buy some minis, too. According to the site, he/she sells some of them. Regardless there are some great info and pics there (these pics here all came from that site, BTW - I hope that's not an issue to show them here), as well as some great advice on painting minis. I'm printing that info out as we speak, to use when I crack open the paint jars for my own figs. Sadly, I will not be able to reproduce those kinds of results, but I'll give it the ol' college try.

I also have numerous loose lead minis, from various sets, including these two (from a duo blister pack back then). I've posted pics of my unpainted Umberhulk fig, but I never even attached the 3rd arm to my Xorn fig. Gotta do that too sometime soon I guess...26 years later...ha!

And here's a duo I just have to get my hands on. I only have one Grenadier Lizardman fig, and I would love to get some more.

I think my lizard-dude came out of this "Denizens of the Swamp" set, which me and my buddies back then split up between us:

I think we also shared this "Dwellers Below" set too, as I think I have the Doppleganger somewhere. Man, I used to love that fig...hope I can find him:

Anyway, time to paint! Wish me luck...

* BTW, hats off to the folks at dndlead.com again, for some awesome pics of some sweet old lead minis!

Dinosaurs vs Undead: The Battle on the Greatroom Floor

2009-04-14T17:09:00.022-04:00

So, my son and I decided to bust out some other minis for some good ol' front room carpet battles. See I've had the "Fuzzy Heroes" and an expansion? to it called "The Lost Toys" sitting on my desk in the "office" (err... geekroom) for a while now, and have yet to actually sit down and play them. My son is 5 y.o. and the idea of taking his pile of stuffed animals and action figures and playing a cool game with them, rules and all, seems like it would be a blast. Add in the cool review I've seen of it on GeekDad, for example, and one of these days, we will play it....darn-it all!

But...on this past weekend (extended for the Easter holiday), he and I only got so far as gathering some dinosaurs from some clearance special ($1.12) at Target, a bag of 28 count dinosaurs & accessories in the "Party like Crazy!" line, which I can't seem to find online any more for a nice pic...ah well. Best I can find is this: they are basically these figs, but in a 28 count pack.
Anyway, then a different idea struck. Let's just play simple army-men type stuff, but with dinosaurs and ...hhmnn ....something else. What shall we use?

It was then that I noticed the bag o' ZOMBIES!!! (100 of those freakin' freaks! for use in the Twilight Creations game "ZOMBIES!!!") sitting there all lonely, and thought yeah, that'll do.
Dinos vs Zombies....cool!

Before I forget, during my search for a cool pic to throw in at the top of this post, I found a near perfect image: this awesome t-shirt design, by a guy called Smacktastic, at threadless.com:
That's one coolass t-shirt, and I may just have to buy a couple - an XL and a 6T....ha! Anyway, awesome shirt design Smacktastic!

Ok, back to the party...

Well, once ya start thinking about these things, of course the geek (especially a recently 4e playing geek) comes shining through and the concepts of a boss, brute, artillery, skirmishers, artillery, etc and of course minions, take shape and now your simple army-guys game turns into a whole new animal.

But that's fun too. So we ran with it. My son has a few of the MEGA Bloks plasma minis that you can assemble, disassemble, mix&match, etc... the ones with the ball-joints at the neck, shoulders, hips, etc. So far, IIRC, he has the T-Rex, the Mummy, and the Ghoul (which is really just a winged skeleton, and just so happens to look completely badass). Well, the Ghoul fell victim to a Sword of Sharpness, or so it would seem, as his wings keep breaking off...errr ....keep getting severed at the joint, so he's still in sick-bay getting super-glued yet again. That stuff doesn't seem to be so "super" these days, that is except for when I botch the job and get some on my fingers... "skin-be-gone" is a better product name for it.

Sssshhhhhhhh..... don't tell anyone, ok? "What they don't know, won't hurt them."

Anyway, so our choices of cool bosses for our game really sorted themselves out, and we decided on the T-Rex for him and the Mummy for me. I did let him pick, and he hilariously changed his pick 3 or 4 times, as I kept describing what types of things a T-Rex could do, and what cool powers a Mummy has, none of which we actually put into our rules...ha! But I would have loved a little Mummy Rot, Mummy's Curse, or even just some good ol' fashioned Fear....boo!

So we had out bosses and our minions: 6 zombies for me and 6 various dino for him, including the pterodactyl he chose first. I decided to give that bad boy "flight"... well as a power to use in the game, that is. But this left me at a disadvantage that we noticed in our first few minutes of play, so I took a Shadow mini from the WotC group and just called him a "Ghost" for simplicity's sake. So now I had a "flyer" too.
Ok, so we started out on the carpet of our greatroom/frontroom/family-room (whatever you like to call it) but those piddly little zombies kept falling over - a premonition?

So I got out a Chessex BattleMat. I recenlty snagged a backup mat, mainly because it was so cheap. It's one of their "irregular" ones, which you would really have to be pretty hardcore to really care about the irregularity of this mat. It was something like a quarter or less the "regular" price for this thing, so I figured it would be a good backup, additional, or "kids' copy" of my main BattleMat. It made sense to just grab it here and not roll with it.

So we flattened it out, as much as possible, utilizing dice cups and crates (props) from our boss minis (they come disassembled in those crates...a kinda cool concept), and started drawing our landscape battlefield. We threw on some trees that came in the bag of dinosaurs for some quick flavor and some obstacles to avoid, and made a cheesy river running thru the middle of the field with a single bridge to cross it. That looked a little weak on the choices of where to move our figs, so I made some dorky little spring-board/teleporter device to use to cross the river too. We also decided that our "flyers" could just fly over the darn thing. Makes sense.

After that, we made up some pretty cool (albeit seemingly simple) rules for movement, attacks, defenses, health, etc. I will spare you those details here, as I am blabbering waaaaaay too long about a simple fighting miniatures game already. I must say though, that by the end of the game, with some modifications to the rules based on play-testing and such, I think it was a pretty cool little game we created. Don't get me wrong, it's not like we totally reengineered miniatures gaming or anything, it's just that sitting down to play army men and finishing up how we did felt like a nice little accomplishment of creativity in some manner or another.

I took some pix of the thing as it progressed, capturing our rules and changes along the way. My son said he wants me to write it all down on paper for us to use again, and I put him in charge of the artwork. I have a feeling it's gonna be freakin hilariously cool if he takes the gig....ha!

Anyway, here's a few more pics of the game as it progressed. The photo quality kinda sucks, due to the fact that I had only the camera in my phone, and it isn't very good for taking closeups...or really even far-a-ways....ha! Anyway, please bear with the pix quality.

Starting out: "Hey there T-bone! What're you lookin' at?!?!?"

Bobby's Dinos:

Daddy's Undead:

Ghost vs T-rex (not my smartest move of the day):

Bobby's not diggin' that "1" he just rolled:

"Every Mummy say 'HEY' (hey!)...say 'HO' (ho!)...say 'HEY-HEY'..."

Dino Graveyard:

I lost to this freakin' pipsqueak?

Bobby wanted a wii-styled final scoreboard:

That Mummy looks sad. Boo-hoo!

+1 Flaming Flameburst Sword of Fiery Flameness

2009-04-13T20:20:00.005-04:00

I've had this series on my DVR-radar for quite some time, and it's finally here:

"Krod Mandoon and the Flaming Sword of Fire" on Comedy Central

Well, it was pretty darn silly, but that's also pretty much why I sat down to watch it. The first 2 eps ran back to back Thursday night, but they are replaying it a few times or so it seems. Try to catch it to see if you dig it or not. Here's a few lines from the other night:

Krod to (the pagan hottie) Aneka:
"If you're gonna tumble, you shouldn't wear *that*...they saw everything!"

Krod to Aneka:
"It's not a chastity belt. That's state-of-the-art vaginal armor."

Zezelryck (wannabe Wizard) to Krod
"And some of those spells are on a timed release, so we may not know for weeks all the good that I did."

Chancellor Dongalor to his advisor Barnabus:
"Engamora? What is that, gay for good-bye?"

Bruce (Krod's mentor's prison lover) to Krod's question of "The Golden One?":
"It's a slightly less cliche way of saying 'The Chosen One'."

Chancellor Dongalor questioning a potential assassin for hire:
"If you were a tree, what kind would you be?"
Assassin:
"A killing tree."

the Narrator describing part of Krod's plan:
"...possibly put the kibosh on a pagan gang bang."

There were many more goofy yet giggle-inducing moments, including the story of a prisoner who's name sounds surprisingly similar to the crime he *allegedly* committed (his name: "Horst Draper"), and some pagan pole-dancing at the 300 Raccoon ceremony, etc.

As stated, it was very, very silly, but it might still be worth some more viewings/recordings. Heck, my DVR has at least a whopping 4% free space at the moment, so why not? We'll see...