Free RPG Day 2012 downloads

Many of the publishers involved with Free RPG Day release PDF copies of their giveaway products during and in the week after the event. Here are the ones that I've found:

• Fantasy Flight Games: Warhammer 40K Roleplay Only War Adventure, "Eleventh Hour", additional characters
• Goodman Games: Dungeon Crawl Classics RPG Quickstart & Adventure, pregenerated characters
• Jon Brazer Enterprises: Pathfinder, "Shadowsfall: Temple of Orcus" (download on Monday)
• Paizo Publishing: Pathfinder module, "Dawn of the Scarlet Sun" (download on Monday at 12am)

Other freebies:

• Timeless Adventures: Pathfinder module "The Tribute" (free this weekend only)
• Postmortem Studios: Irrepressible!, full game (today only)

I'll update this page as I find more.

Free RPG Day 2011 links here.

Free RPG Day is tomorrow!

The annual celebration of Free RPG Day is tomorrow. Based on the highly successful Free Comic Book Day, it's a chance for the gaming industry to show off new products, give away free quickstart rules or accessories, and get more people involved in our hobby.

See if one of your local game stores is participating with giveaways or game demonstrations. Many publishers also have free downloads for the occasion at their sites or RPGNow/DriveThruRPG.

Some of the publishers involved (and others) make Free RPG Day products available on PDF over the weekend or on the Monday following. My list from last year continues to be one of the most popular pages on this blog, so look for it again this year -- watch this space later tonight or tomorrow morning.

As I mentioned last year, I always have good intentions about volunteering to run a game demo at a local store, although schedules seldom seem to work out. I'll be grading papers and final exams this weekend.

A thought about using WaRP for pulp sword-and-sorcery

The upcoming end of the semester is freeing up my mind to think about gaming (and posting here) again. Trey's recent post about using bits of Atlas Games' newly-OGL WaRP system in D&D got me thinking about how I could use it for running Conan/pulp fantasy/sword-and-sorcery.

I have a list of possibilities that I've been kicking around for far too long now, and I'll just add WaRP to the list. Traits in WaRP remind me of Aspects in FATE, which I've already considered incorporating for their method of building pulp storytelling right into the game mechanics. Maybe hybridize WaRP traits with the best part of D&D Next, Backgrounds and Themes.

Birthdays of horror legends

I have been so wrapped up in work and school lately, I completely forgot about the anniversaries of Peter Cushing's birthday (May 26th) and Vincent Price's birthday (May 27th), along with Christopher Lee's 90th birthday (May 27th). Mrs. Kaiju and I hold these gentlemen in very high regard as masters of the horror genre, with legacies that extend throughout film making, popular culture and gaming.

I have posted tributes to them here in the past on these occasions. The video below is a clip that was added to the end of part 2 of Flesh and Blood: The Hammer Heritage of Horror when it aired on BBC1.

D&D Next Public Playtest starts on Thursday

The day is almost here -- those folks who have signed up should get their announcement emails that the D&D Next public playtest materials are available. Being very curious about how the rules will be shaped, I signed on for the notification when it was first announced.

 

The only real contact anyone has had with the new rules so far (to my knowledge) was a playtest using only character sheets at the D&D Experience event in January, a playtest at PAX East, some closed groups, and several gamers well-known in the online community giving feedback as consultants for the project. This public test will give the rest of us a glimpse at what the design team has been working on.

 

Much of the speculation about D&D Next on the internet has been over what small bits and pieces have been revealed from these closed playtests and the public articles on the Wizards website from Mike Mearls and company. The departure of Monte Cook from the project has also fueled the chatter.

 

My thoughts on the speculation? We've see these kinds of high-profile product releases before, and I don't think we can really draw any conclusions from any of the rumors or the articles yet, at least until we see the playtest material. I take anything mentioned in the designers' articles or the choices in associated user polls with a huge grain of salt. Topics in the articles have included the core classes, the role of the magic-user, what's important for paladins, hit points and "healing surges", just to name a few contentious areas. If I were Mearls, I'd throw all sorts of crazy ideas out there into the wild and see what sticks, or what the public shoots down. It's free advice and feedback. Why not use that?

 

This public playtest is not the same as the beta tests for Pathfinder or the Dungeon Crawl Classics RPG, where fairly complete PDFs of the rules were given out freely for trial. The D&D Next playtest materials are said to be a short adventure, pre-generated characters, and enough of the rules to use the adventure -- I assume it would be similar to the quickstart adventures for Dragon Age or Castles & Crusades. There may be a playtest agreement required, keeping any discussion and feedback to official WotC channels.

 

I want to give the playtest rules a try. I don't know if I will be playing D&D Next as a regular thing. Our group has multiple other rule sets that we work with: homebrews, Pathfinder, Unisystem, BRP, FATE.... the list goes on. We as a local group of gamers are not that dependent on it. Having said that, I still think we want the 900-pound gorilla of the gaming world to be successful.

 

 

Favorite Music Friday: Beastie Boys

A much-delayed tribute to Adam Yauch. Thanks for all the great music, MCA... and thanks to Nathanial Hörnblowér for the excellent videos.

Giving Forgotten RPGs Another Chance

What RPG in your collection that you haven't played in years (or ever!) do you have the urge to pull off the shelf and try again? Do you want to see if it still plays the same way you remember? Have you just not found the right group of players to try it yet?

 

I can name three titles right away:

• James Bond 007 (Victory Games)
• Indiana Jones (TSR)
• Star Frontiers (TSR)

What would be on your list?

The Blogging will Continue Until Morale Improves

Work and other real life issues have kept me from posting anything since the beginning of last week. My hope is that things will ease up some beginning next week and I will have more gaming related posts here then.

It's not like there's anything else happening in the gaming world now, right?

I would also like to get back to the woefully neglected Cult Classic of the Week movie reviews and some of the other series posts I had in mind at the beginning of the year. And I have some ideas for a new blog layout that I need to test.

Link: D&D Mystara Gazetteer series reviews

Lowell at Age of Ravens finished his series of reviews of the classic Mystara Gazetteer series for Basic/Expert D&D last week. I never picked up any of the Gazetteers, and this series helped me discover what I was missing. Each review is an overview of what you will find in the book along with ways to use the material in a campaign, regardless of rules system. Links to each review are here; the wrap-up and final thoughts are here.

Not much has changed since 1981

Following on from my previous post about The Encyclopedia of Military Modeling, I wanted to share a few choice quotes from the book. They could have been written to describe the RPG community today.

First, from the Foreword by Donald Burgess, editor in chief, Campaigns Magazine:

"What emerges is a picture of a hobby in a state of continuing flux, a constantly growing and expanding force. The sweeping changes of the past years are healthy ones, rediscovering and drawing on the past, moving into new areas of expression, provoking new attitudes and approaches -- a hobby that keeps moving forward, bettering itself in many ways, providing impetus for extraordinarily fresh talents on all levels, making stronger demands on all miniaturists, no matter what their area of interest." (p. 6)

The last paragraph of the Introduction by Dennis Knight:

"More and more people are getting bored with watching ball games and banal spoon-fed television entertainment and, with rising fuel costs making travelling a luxury, they will be inclined to adopt hobbies that can be pursued in their homes. We welcome you to the world of Military Modelling." (p. 13)

South London Warlords Wargaming Club

Somewhere around 6th or 7th grade, I got a copy of The Encyclopedia of Military Modeling, published in London by Octopus Books in 1981. It was on a bargain books table at Ayr-Way (which later became Target). Building model kits was a hobby of mine as far back as I can remember -- even if I wasn't very good. Lots of cars, tanks, planes, the USS Enterprise (and the bridge kit, and Mr. Spock firing a phaser at the alien snake creature) and others were hastily assembled at my house in those days.

When I saw The Encyclopedia, then, I was naturally intrigued. This was relevant to my interests, and did it ever deliver. Many a day was spent pouring over the color photos, reading about the histories of model kit and figure manufacturers, and the instructions for creating detailed dioramas.

This was right before I had my first experiences with The Gaming Hobby™, and it's easy to see how this prepared me for it. Step-by-step instructions are given for scratchbuilding models, conversions, creating molds and casting. I studied the two-page spread on model scales when I started to look at what kinds of military model kits I could use for my own Warhammer 40K conversions.

In the introduction, there is some discussion of the wargaming hobby. What really struck with me -- and one of my main memories of the book -- is the photo of an example wargame in progress. I'm not sure if it captures a actual moment of the game -- it strikes me as being posed for the photographer. Even so, what I love about it is the overall feeling it conveys, encapsulating much of what I remember about seeing historical wargamers at conventions around that time. Even better, I wanted to think that there were cool gaming clubs out there where players wore ties, or sweatshirts with club logos.

I had a little story about the photo that I made up in my head early on. I got the sense that the gent in the suit jacket and tie is measuring the distance to move his unit of figures, while the fellow next to him is pointing out a place in the rules that counter-acts what the first is trying to do.

"I'm going to move this unit 15cm forward!"

"Hmmm... according to the rules, that unit can only move 12cm!"

This matched up with what I saw on our own 40K tables at various times.

I also love the "British-ness" of the book, if you will excuse the term. It uses those spelling conventions of course (influential on a young impressionable American lad) and mainly covers the military modeling hobby in England, reinforcing my idea about it being a place where everyone took part in intellectually stimulating hobbies like military modeling and wargaming. The Encyclopedia of Military Modeling, along with Warhammer 40K, White Dwarf Magazine, 2000AD and others ensured that my early days in the hobby were heavily influenced by the British gaming scene.

The South London Warlords are still an active group and run Salute, the largest wargaming convention in the UK (the 40th anniversary show is later this month). You can read a short history of the club, with more great photos, on their blog.

First Edition AD&D reprints delayed until July

It appears that the 1e reprints have been delayed until July 17th. That is OK; I was in for a DMG, and with the delay perhaps I can save my pennies for the other two books.

I'm still curious about how "limited" this edition will be. Did Wizards get more orders from distributors than they expected, sending them back to print more copies?

Flying Swordsmen -- Old-School Role-playing in Mythic China

I meant to post this over a week ago, so you may have already seen it. Lord Gwydion posted his Flying Swordsmen RPG rules at his blog. He uses the base rules from Your Favorite Fantasy Role-Playing Game and incorporates an incredible amount of detail in a wuxia-influenced Mythic China that could-have-been. Imagine if Oriental Adventures had been more focused on China rather than Japan, and you might have had something almost as good as Flying Swordsmen. It's filled with great rules, adventure ideas and period illustrations; a solid presentation of the material. Roll up some characters and shake the pillars of heaven!

John Carter (of Mars): go see it

We finally saw John Carter on Saturday night. It was great fun! To me, it was reminiscent of the Saturday afternoon matinee, "Family Classics" style of film, like Journey to the Center of the Earth or Jason and the Argonauts.

 

It strayed from the storyline of A Princess of Mars, but not terribly so. If you enjoy sci-fi/fantasy adventure movies, I think you'll like this. (we saw the 2D version)

Back From Being Sick (and Star Wars Links)

I lost the last week or so to some pretty serious sinus problems. For a day or two it was almost like having the flu. I'm on the mend now but not back to normal yet. With luck, by next week I'll have the restored brain cells to think about games and movies and important stuff like that again.

 

For now, I'll leave these links here.

 

Machete Order: A New Way to Watch Star Wars

http://www.wired.com/geekdad/2012/02/machete-order-star-wars

 

What if "Star Wars Episode I" was good? (some NSFW language)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VgICnbC2-_Y

 

Topher Grace edited the 'Star Wars' prequels into one 85-minute movie and we saw it

http://www.slashfilm.com/topher-grace-edited-star-wars-prequels-85minute-movie

Too Many Kickstarter Projects

There are too many great Kickstarter/IndieGoGo gaming projects in the wild right now. How can I choose?

 

* Monster Stock Art and Stand-Up Minis

* Dwimmermount

* The Monolith from Beyond Space and Time and The God that Crawls

* Mobile Frame Zero, the new edition of Vincent Baker's Lego robot game Mechaton

* Battle Blokx wargaming terrain

* Random Dungeon Generator as a Dungeon Map

* Tectonic Craft Studios laser-cut wargaming terrain

* Mass Transit IV maps

* Story Forge brainstorming cards

* Lions of the North RPG

 

I had already decided to use my March allotment of gaming funds to pre-order Night's Black Agents, and then I see that Skyrim is on sale at Best Buy this week...

Ralph McQuarrie, RIP

My friend K. reflected that, concerning the appeal of Star Wars, Ralph McQuarrie is at least the equal of George Lucas. I have to agree.

Lucas invented the characters and story and hired conceptual artist McQuarrie to create art and designs to show 20th Century Fox. These designs and storyboards convinced skeptical executives to greenlight the project.



My own understanding and visualization of the Star Wars universe is based heavily on three sources: the original film, the Marvel Comics series, and Ralph McQuarrie's art. I never followed his career as closely as I should have, as much as some other favorites. However, I have a strong and distinct memory of seeing those images from his imagination on the pages of Starlog Magazine and others. Some of the designs made it into the films intact, some were changed like the Millennium Falcon design, and others -- such as "Luke Starkiller" and the original Chewbacca design -- were dropped from early drafts. But they all have that great, grand feeling of adventure and they tell stories. You want to know who these people are, where they are from, what the source of conflict is.

Ralph McQuarrie designed concepts for many films and other projects, including Battlestar Galactica and the "Planet of the Titans" Star Trek film project, part of an outstanding visual legacy that will be long remembered.

A Bizarre Gaming-related Dream

This is a dream I had on Sunday morning right before I woke up (i.e., before being awakened by cats). I was teaching a college course on the history of role-playing games. The building reminded me of an older mid-century high school building. Two senior faculty members were observing the class. It was a tough crowd of students, not very engaged and not interacting, perhaps a freshman level course. I was talking about Tékumel at the end of the first class (which I wouldn't plan to discuss on the first day of such a course, but hey, it's a dream) when I was interrupted by a student with a question.

"This is all very interesting, but we can't afford to play any of these games."

I told the class, "Not a problem. There are many great RPG products available for free, even complete games. You can enjoy playing them without spending a dime." This changed the tenor of the class. The mood of the room improved completely and they were alert and engaged to the end.

The class was over just a minute later. As I was leaving the classroom, a turtle and a duck jumped out of the trash can. One of the observers -- who looked very much like John Rhys-Davies -- closed the door slowly behind us, saying "Don't worry, we'll take care of it."

I told you it was bizarre.

Friday Photo-palooza

Grading homework assignments has been keeping me busy the past two weeks. In lieu of something original today, here are some images of interest. Identify them all and win a shiny new No-Prize!

 

 

Link: Playing AD&D, then and now

Beedo put up a great post yesterday at Dreams in the Lich House about playing straight out-of-the-book AD&D 1e today. His group's observations about the game are informed by the years of play since 1e and modern retro-clones -- particularly OSRIC -- that have smoothed over many of the bumpy spots. It's worth taking a look at what they discovered, especially with the limited edition 1e reprints on the way. And I love the Gygax quote he found.