Nostalgia is fun!

Plaid Stallions posted this pic from a Canadian catalog. Apparently the cardboard dome and the utility belts were only available to hosers. I had one of those 'lightsabers' and while I didn't have one of the domes, my best bud in grade three did. I am still sickenly jealous.

But what's really tweeking my nostalgia bone lately are the Fisher Price Adventure People. I had a bunch of these sets as a kid, but at the time they were used mostly as utility vehicles for my GI:Joes and they all got passed on to cousins or sold for pittance at garage sales. If I had the energy and money to get back into collecting, I'd be ebaying the hell out of this.

Link: How to Make a Fantasy Map

An article from TOR.com where Isaac Stewart shares his process for making the map for The Emperor’s Blades by Brian Staveley. 

Skullwort

Real Life: Snapdragon seeds

The Skullwort plant has no leaves and usually resembles little more than a small dead bush and is covered in small, white seeds that look remarkably like human skulls.

Possessed of the rare quality known to biomancers as necrosynthesis, Skullwort can only grow if germinated within the body of someone, or something, recently dead. As a result, they can be be sometimes found deep below the earth, or inside darkened castles while on the surface they are most often found on battlefields and cemeteries.

The skull shaped seedpods are prized by necromancers, seers and druids for their many qualities, but supreme care must be made in harvesting as the pods will try and find a new host to germinate in by chewing their way into the flesh of any creature that may come into contact.

Known Properties
-Seeds placed into the skull of a skeleton can cause it to re-animate. The skeleton will then try and kill any living creature nearby to deposit the skull-seed into the flesh and allow it to germinate.

-Seers and Prophets have been known to collect the skulls and after being inscribed with forbidden runes, are used as powerful divination tools.

-If carefully harvested, prepared and brewed into a tea, it allows the drinker to converse with the dead.

-If the wind is blowing from the Final Realm, the skulls talk to each other in the voices of those who have passed.

-It is rumoured that feeding the seeds to Wraiths or Zombies might sate their hunger for a limited period of time. 

-Crushed into a paste and carefully prepared, it can be used as a potent zombie-bane. Much care must be taken however, as the recipe is very difficult to make and the slightest mistake can result in a terrifyingly powerful hallucinogenic and necrotizing drug.

-A party of delvers once found a blind and ancient dwarf who had been dropped into some subterranean oubliette. The dwarf, now quite mad, claimed that he was the last survivor to an expedition that had gone deeper than any before or since. There, in caves carved through the hearts of precious stones larger than castles, they discovered a vast realm of Fungoids, Ant Men, Morlok and Gremlin, all ruled by a giant skull that hung from the branch of a tiny tree. 

Hospital Survival Tips

A member of my old gaming group went through a difficult operation yesterday (successfully, by all reports!). To help her out, I wrote down some Hospital Survival Tips. I thought I'd post them over at my Other Blog in case anyone else needed them

LEGO Boosh!

Two of my favourite things wrapped up in a delicious frothy jelly. LEGO and The Boosh! 

This moment of sublime awesomeness is brought to you by Ochre Jelly! 

Ice flow nowhere to go

Lost in the blinding whiteness of the tundra!

If you are not familiar with The Mighty Boosh and you like your comedy with a heavy dash of surreal, do your self a favour and learn more ... so much more awesome.  

Gamers' Common: A Manifesto

Of Dice and Men brings up the concept of Gamers' Common. Originated by Frank Mentzer, it is an idea designed to get around the Edition Wars and bring all roleplayers together, regardless what game they happen to be playing. What it means is writing game supplements using terms that are common to most games, or at least understood by all gamers; things like Rounds, Hit Points, Experience etc. It then falls to the game-master (and players!) to choose what rules set they want to apply. This might seem like a bit of work, but isn't any different than trying to convert a really good adventure that might not exactly fit your current game, edition or preferred OSR. More importantly, it leaves things open-ended enough to allow for GM improvisation and adaptation. I don't believe that you should play anything straight out of the box.

Two of my all time favourite role-playing supplements are The Chronicles of Talislanta (available all free and legal here) which outlines the continent of Talislanta, the primary setting for the game of the same name; and Titan which describes the world of Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone's Fighting Fantasy and Sorcery! gamebooks. Neither has a single rule in them, but both are utterly bottomless in terms of ideas and inspiration.

I thought of both of them when I came across of Mentzer's idea of rule neutral supplements. I've been struggling to find a focus for this blog for a long time and my own game writing has been all over the freakin' map.

I find the D&D Edition Wars to be tiring and pointless* and my own pet favourite games (Talislanta, TWERPS and WEG D6) are a little too esoteric to fill out a regularly posted blog. Homebrewing is fun, but again appeals only to a very small niche market (basically, myself). Still, I want to share my ideas, or at least put them down in one place so I can refer to them later. Writing in Gamers' Common allows me to do this, and I don't have to cross reference anything to make sure I converted the THAC0 correctly.

So I am leaving the rules behind and embarking down the GC path. I might occasionally dip into a rules specific post from time to time (if I ever bother to finish that TWERPS GI:JOE supplement, for example), but otherwise I am going to concentrate my energies on being as general as possible.

*For the record, I am an OSR Grognard at heart, but I am a believer in playing the game in front of you. If the GM puts the time and effort into running a 4thE game, play that and don't bitch how AD&D or the Red Box or Labyrinth Lord or Pathfinder does it better.  

Tsoukalos, the Great Seer

Link to the man himself

A century ago, Tsoukalos arrived by aethership to the Starport of Skree with an incredible tale. He claimed that on his world, aliens had once ruled as benevolent gods until they had been driven off by sorcerers who exploited the alien's own technology against them.

In time, both the sorcerers and the aliens were forgotten by history, save for a few gifted scholars and theorists who tried to warn that the the aliens had not been eliminated, only driven away. One day, they would return.

According to Tsoukalos, one night a ship of pure light appeared above his condo and he was taken up. He tells that the unnamed beings had once been the kind rulers of a mighty galactic empire that spanned a thousand worlds. But that one day they had been betrayed by those they cared for and that they had been forced to flee into the void. In their rush, they had been forced to leave many of their secrets and technology behind.

He was told that humanity on his home planet was not yet ready for their return, but that because of his faith and devotion he had been chosen to search for those lost secrets and spread the word of their return to the worlds they had left behind.

Since then, he claims to have traveled to over a hundred worlds, teaching all those who might listen of their wonder, and searching for ancient clues in lost ziggurats, forgotten runes and city college libraries across the galaxy.

Merrickville Aikikai

A nice article about my first Sensei's new club.

Dehydrated Monsters

Using a Spell of Dehydration or a Wand of Pickling, some monsters can be transformed into a dried, miniature state. Though completely inert, the monsters can be reanimated by immersing it in water. Though the reason for it is unclear, Dinosaurs from the Thunder Plains and the common Terrible Lizard are notably susceptible to this and after dehydration, will remain viable for many years.

Some clever mages will carry a bag of such creatures and reactivate them whenever the need for a rampaging dinosaur is required.

However, it should be noted that to fully revive the small strip of slightly spongy leather into a three ton rampaging monster, the water required is equal to the amount initially lost.

The Missing Female Pilots of Star Wars

Linkage