I can see Russia from my house!

I was watching the Saturday night live Thursday special thing, and Alaska came up. Of course it did. Which reminded me of the boxed set of Twilight 2000 I picked up at a flea market five or six years ago. Contained within were the original rules, a few issues of Challenger, some modules, vehicle guides for Soviets and NATO, and a copy of the Indianapolis Star from November 8, 1987. This is why.

A map of the "Arctic Chessboard". Does it get cooler than hovercraft, frost bite, and killing Russians to keep America safe?

WOLVERINES!

There are few things as manly and dorky at the same time as playing Twilight 2000. Most RPG's, yeah, girls can get into them. Not Twilight, a gun-porn game of shooting and stabbing and looting.

Not the ones with Monster Mash on them...

I've found a new reason to love Halloween time. Cheap spooky instrumental soundtracks. I think most DM's have bought CDs for the express purpose of using them as background music. The earliest ones I remember trying to hunt down were the Conan and Excalibur soundtracks. Around Halloween, every supermarket, costume shop and drug store has a small stack of creepy party music. Usually for dirt cheap. The ones I have found the most use for is the Midnight Syndicate ones. I looked at their site, they even specifically made a CD of D&D soundtrack music. Can't wait to try out the one I just snagged for 2$. Vampyre, Symphonies from the Crypt. Makes me want to run Ravenloft or something like that.

Let's Get Silly!

Toon. Good times. I've only had a chance to run it on one night, and damn it was a lot of fun. Adventures are classified as quick flicks, short subjects and feature films. A quick flick is supposed to last about 15 minutes per player, a short subject about 20, feature film around 30. Characters don't die, they fall down. They then have to sit out the game for 3 minutes. This timed set-up makes for some fast furious fun. I wonder if this is one of those rules that pop up that few people actually use? I consider it one of the best features of the game. That, and the gajillion random tables.

With this timed scenario idea, you can cram like 2 to 4 crazy little scenarios into one gaming session, with like 1 to 3 scheduled breaks. I really can't see playing this as a campaign, even though they suggest it. Themed cartoon series, the examples are a knock off of ghost busters, a space opera, and spies. Great game to use as an introduction to our crazy little hobby I think.

The secrets of the spirit world unveiled for the first time!

This supplement came out when AD&D was seriously winding down. White Wolf was kicking their ass without a doubt. It introduced the spirit world, and three classes that gained their power from it. Saying three new classes was a little misleading, it was more like one new class, three kits.

The new classes were a little like priests, but when they chose spells for their spell slots, it was permanent. If they wanted to switch out a spell it would offend their patron spirit. Most of the spells dealt exclusively with spirits. One gave the shaman the ability to bind spirits into fetishes.

Pretty pointless supplement. In the DM only section, it is revealed that the spirit world doesn't exist. It's all in the heads of the shaman. Stupid. Integrating this into a running campaign would assuredly end it. Starting a new campaign based on this would turn into one guy is the hero, everyone else follows him around as he reads omens and barters with ancestors.

More Parlainth

Last post really felt incomplete, so I'm gonna revisit the boxed set. Still strong smell in it, I'm hoping the more I open it, the better it will smell. The smell I would prefer is rotting paper, like the funk given off by the 1st ed. AD&D books. Maybe even the sweet ink smell that books with lots of color illustrations seem to emanate.

The box contains two punch out card sheets of monsters and magic items detailed in the enclosed campaign book. Awesome idea, I'm glad Paizo is running with this now. The one pictured on the left is the Butterspider Box. It's a beat up rusty tin box with a lump of lard in the shape of a wolfspider inside of it. When you touch the spider, you heal, and it melts. This is one of my favorite magic items ever. That is some flavor right there (lard flavor at least). Makes a healing potion look lazy and weak. The illustration doesn't make the box look all beat up. It makes it look like a eldrich rune encrusted obvious artifact. The real shape of it makes it look like some sort of random flea market junk. Something a compulsive hoarder would store with all of their mason jars and christmas cards.

The Forgotten City

About seven or eight years ago, I stumbled onto this boxed set at a flea market. For a short span of time, maybe about a summer, I found a big stack of loot there. The blue cover Holmes D&D, Twilight 2000 boxed set, a D&D calendar from like 1981, a couple of issues of dragon from the early eighties, and this boxed set. The stall selling it had like ten copies of it. Awesome.

I ran Earthdawn, maybe four to six times. Didn't get a chance to use anything from this set. I'm pretty sure I found it near the end of my interest in said campaign. It is a pretty sweet box of goodies though. Nice almost sandbox style setting. Rough maps, all sorts of adventure seeds. I really should have read through it again if I was going to blog about it I guess. Huh. Inside of it I have typed notes of all the Earthdawn adventures I ran in the mini campaign. Also in there is the stale smell of smoke. I used to be a smoker, quit about a year ago, so now when ever I open a book or boxed set that I haven't touched in a while, I get a whiff of old smoke. It's kind of gross.

What Gaming Hath Shown

So, before, there was the post about what our gaming influences are. Made me think of the other route, what gaming has done to my influences. Or, what I discovered through being a gamer.

1. THE Authors. Lovecraft, Leiber, Moorcock. All of which I discovered through a lucky find at a salvation army. The Deities and Demigods that contained all of these. I ended up selling it at the first gen con I went to, meh.

2. Cyberpunk. I might have discovered it later on, when love of film would have shown to me that Blade Runner kicks all kindsa ass. For me though, it was Shadowrun. Orcs with guns and cybernetics happened to be the gateway drug for me.

3. Music. Joy Division, Sisters of Mercy, X, Robert Johnson. For as reviled as White Wolf is, at least it had awesome suggested listening lists.

4. John Woo. The Hong Kong stuff at least. Hong Kong Action Theater had a super awesome suggested viewing list, which I only scraped the surface of. The Gun Fu stuff really sated me I think. So fricken awesome.

5. Samurai. I really only watched Kurosawa and read Book of the Five Rings so I could run a kick ass game of Legend of the Five Rings. Never did, though.

6. Anime. I'm sure I would have eventually seen Akira, MD geist, Ninja Scroll and Vampire Hunter D. Heavy Gear just gave me the kick in the ass to get around to it. Starting with Patlabor.

5 Influences! Yay memes!

1. Piers Anthony
As much as I wanted to read real fantasy fiction as a lad, the local library left much to be desired. Of your fantasy mainstays, seems like they never had more than one or two of any given series, and never the first episode. Except for the Xanth books. Think this is where I decided a little bit of silly anachronism is ok in fantasy.

2. Elfquest
When Marvel comics reprinted this under the epic imprint, in color no less, I was lucky enough to stumble onto the first issue. I was just strolling through the local drug store, when BAM! I espied a first issue of a new series. I spouted "Wow! This looks just like dungeons and dragons!" From there on I was hooked. Took periodic three mile walks to the local comic store to try and snag the current issue. If I missed an issue, hunted for it in the back issue bins of whatever comic store we might visit on family vacations. I'm still missing one issue, which I have sort of avoided finding. I like having that quest unfinished.

3. Krull
My brother had the board game, which came with little resin figures of The Prince, and The Beast. They found their way into the first couple of sessions I ran, along with whatever half painted mini's of my bro's I could scrounge up.

4. Zork
Not the computer game, we were too poor for that. Nope, the What-do-I-do-now books. Good stuff, picked them up at school book fairs, when I could beg the change for them. Still have a copy of #4 Conquest at Quendor. Bivotaur and Juranda have to face down a riddle talking cat head on the end of a tentacle. The demon Jeearr!


5. Dr. Frankenstein's Haunted Castle
Awesome attraction at Indiana beach. Just really think a good dungeon should kinda be like a haunted house ride. Like the intro to the DnD cartoon. Rat tails tickling at your feet, drop away balconies, false doors, all kindsa tricksy fun.

Free Game Day!

So, free game day, pretty ossim eh? All kinds of free starter rules, think the one I like the best is the Harnmaster Field of Daisies. Never really paid much attention to Harn, but looking through this, I'm thinking I should have. Half realistic middle ages, half typical fantasy, nice middle ground between the ole D&D and Pendragon. The scenario itself seems like it would be great fun, with a sort of made by Europeans feel, like the old Warhammer fantasy adventures. One of the character stats I've never seen in any other system, is for how pleasant one's voice sounds. That just might be the key to easy role playing (for npc's at least) that I have been searching for!

Field of Daisies also has a new fun toy in it for me, a extensive map key. I really feel like map making in RPG's fell by the wayside. Probably in the early nineties, when on one side, you had TSR trying to convince you to make 3d maps (Castles and Catacombs guide) and on the other, White Wolf telling you that maps are for railroading suckers. This map key has usable symbols for ceiling height, whether or not a door has a bar, what type of ceiling, how to mark changes in elevation and floor height easily, all sorts of goodies.

The castles and crusades quick start has character creation in it. Neato! Reminds me of the Holmes blue book Dnd, without monster and magic item listings. Traveller 0, full set of rules, plus character creation as well. This really impresses me. I thought demo and quick start rules were made of about 5 pre-generated characters, a rough run down of the rules, and a short scenario. Quite a few of these little booklets are just rules, no characters or scenario. One of them is just setting information (the goodman games one I think). Would be nice to have the time to sit down and blast through one or two of these eventually. Heh, seems like the backlog of gaming is just piling up.

Less than once a month!

I've been far too lazy to post, this is a pretty common occurrence so it really shouldn't raise any eyebrows. Anyway, as far as gaming goes, I've got mixed feelings on how soon Shackled City is going to be over. On the one hand, I'm a little dissapointed I couldn't meet my personal goal of finishing it by summer, setting back further the much anticipated (at least by me!) start of Rise of the Runelords. On the other side, kinda glad it's dragging out, because I've really enjoy trying to kill Krunk, Midori, and Silverswift.

Things I am diddling with:

A Subsector of Traveller. Something I started in september, and have slowly been adding to over the past nine months. Tedious, mind numbing at times, but also super fascinating. Trying to make each world stand out, when there are dozens in a system, pretty damn hard. Eventually it will be to the point where I can drop players in on a planet and have the fun explode out from behind the screen by the gallon!

Omega World. From the polyhedron article that I borrowed, and will give back, because I just downloaded the pdf. Making a ruin crawl and such, drawing up maps, slapping together monsters and npc's. Planning on adapting Legions of Gold to it next, for a micro campaign (four to eight sessions tops).

4.0 Random Dungeon. Love randomizing dungeons, and this one set of tables really breathes life into my random dungeonizing. Pretty much the only table I use on a regular basis is the Gygax ones from the DMG, so using these makes me happier. No 45 degree angle tunnels, curved tunnels, tunnels that smack into each other, x intersections, all that poop. Made up 3 levels of my 4.0 MEGADUNGEON! so far, it has way too many goblins in it for my tastes, gonna have to go back in there and change them into robot dogs or something.

Maybe give TMNT another go

So my current campaign is winding down after over a year, good times. Only two more chapters left (I'm thinking anywhere between 3 and 9 sessions, most likely 7). Secret to a successful long running campaign? A published campaign with a definite end. Makes it a lot easier to soldier through the rough spots.

Unless I intend on playing Paizo adventure paths for the rest of my life, gonna have to learn how to start and then continue a campaign for longer than three sessions. That's pretty tough.

Here's some ideas for what to do when the campaign ends;

Take a break (little risky, might be hard to get back in the groove)

Ask someone else to run (Rise of the Runelords anyone? Castles and Crusades?)

Run or play (or both) 4e when it comes out

Play a chain of three session rpg miniseries, with rotating games and gms, with beer + pretzel games thrown in every once and a while

Try to run a superhero game (whole big can of worms there, from what I understand, there is no such thing as a good superhero system)