Lin Carter's Year's Best Fantasy Stories Vol. 1

I am a sucker for these old Lin Carter anthologies. They contain the best of, at least, three generations of Fantasy Fiction. The first two volumes both contain tales by Robert E. Howard and Clark Ashton Smith. Both volumes have new or rare material from Fritz Leiber, L. Sprague de Camp, Jack Vance and Carter. The tales which I often enjoy most are from the young writers of the time. Vol. 1 of The Year's Best Fantasy Stories features newcomers Pat McIntosh and Charles R Saunders. There is also a piece of lost history of Middle Earth as told by Marrion Zimmer Bradley, The Sword of Dyrnwyn by Lloyd Alexander and a posthumous work by Hans Bok. Every sentence is classic, enduring fantasy enjoyment and most of these folks are listed as inspirational reading in Appendix N of the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons: Dungeon Master's Guide.

2014 was a quest of personal accomplishment for me which I have completed with success. I am now free of the literal and proverbial text books, free to read any smut, pulp or trash that I may like. And free to wonder the wastelands of fantasy role playing enthusiasts, a journey I hope to renew and share the travels of the polyhedral dice bag. 

Dungeons & Dirigibles

 I know this has been done, but leave it to my DIY nature to reinvent the wheel, I think that's much the nature of the OSR, is reinventing the RPG wheel. While reading Frankenstein I began imagining what D&D, I mean original D&D, would be if Appendix N where composed of Shelley's Frankenstein, Stoker's Dracula, the Jules Verne catalogue and 1001 Arabian Nights.

First, the list of classes would be slightly different. There would be the traditional Fighters but they might be renamed Soldiers and magic users would be heavily focused on alchemy . All clerics would be Christian, Masonic, Muslim or Egyptian. (Gotta throw in the Masonic and Egyptology hooks.) Since Frankenstein is based on a scientist that recreates life, there would have to be a class called Professor, Surgeon or Scientist. (I like Surgeon.) There would have to be a rouge, scoundrel or beggar class and a specialist class that all classes could adopt, we'll call it Adventurer. The Adventurer subclass would allow characters to focus on weapon specialization, fine tuning their profession and/or exploration.

The weapons list would be different too, focusing mainly on cutlasses, rapiers, flint lock firearms, torches and pitchforks.

 Since Frankenstein was the source of these ideas I'll focus a bit more on the Surgeon class. In Shelley's tale, Frankenstein's creation was the central problem or obstacle of the plot. Within the scope of an RPG, the nature or personality of the creation, or Flesh Golems, could be variable.  V. Frankenstein struggled with the moral nature and responsibility of his creation and this wouldn't be the case with all, if any, player characters. The player character surgeons could, possibly, create any number of socially functioning Flesh Golems.

Now I'm thinking that this idea, which I'll call Dangers & Dirigibles, is most likely to become a set of rules for Encounter Critical. Which brings me to the obvious point that I'm way past any reasonable deadline for producing Phasic issue 5.  To be continued...

I had a gamer geek Christmas, here's the proof

My lovely wife, Sally, is very diligent about using my Amazon wish list when shopping for me for Christmas. I keep the wish list short and loaded with things which will provide me with plenty of enjoyment. Through the Amazon list and verbal suggestions, I got some good gamer swag this year.


I've been eying The Dungeon Alphabet for two years and was very glad to find it available on Amazon. Santa, and Sally, brought me a copy of the Dungeon Alphabet and I intend to get plenty of fun use out of it soon.



I had read an e-book version of Lord Dunsany's Book of Wonder and determined that I needed a print copy of Dunsany's work. The Book of Wonder is available with another set of short stories, originally titled Tales of Wonder, in a new paperback titled Wonder Tales. Thanks to Sally, Amazon and Santa, I have the gonzo Book of Wonder and a whole slew of Dunsany's stories which I have yet to read. The Book of Wonder and most of Dunsany's work, I would imagine, is in the public domain. The e-book is free and is a must read for fans of fantasy literature and frpgs. Get it soon if you have never read any Dunsany. His work really provides a sense of pre-Tolkien fantasy fiction.

So, here's a tricky thing I did, I knew Santa and I were giving Sally a Kindle so I just mentioned that I'd like the Batman Chuck Taylor High-tops and not the flippin Dark Knight version. I really didn't expect to get the shoes for Christmas but my hints and suggestions paid off and I now have the first pair of Chuck Taylors I've owned since high school. I've been wearing them proudly since I put them on Christmas morning. They don't have the arch support of my other casual shoes, Merrell, but I will not be wearing these Detective Comic kicks to work either.

To top the gamer geek themed holiday off Sally and Santa also brought me a Justice League of America t-shirt too. I've never owned a Justice League shirt but I'm sure to be sporting this new one later this week.
I think I'll go read a Detective Comic now.

Swords against Tomorrow; edited by Robert Hoskins

This book is very fun and isn't that largely the point of fiction, to enjoy reading, to enjoy the tale. These tales, while enjoyable, light reading, are told by a Who's Who of Sword and Sorcery Fiction. I don't need to introduce these authors to anyone reading this post but only to mention their names; Poul Anderson, a multiple Hugo and Nebula Award winner, Fritz Leiber, famous for his Lankhmar series, John Jakes who is a bestselling author of Historical Fiction and Leigh Brackett who you all know.

I love these short story collection because they are very quick reads. Swords against Tomorrow is much like the old Flashing Swords series and Year's Best Fantasy series and has much the same cast of authors. I noticed that in the two final stories, by Jakes and Brackett, the heroes become altruist in the end. Jakes hero was Brak the Barbarian, of course, who surrenders the treasure of his adventure to restore the a town which had previously sold him into slavery. Brackett's hero, who could be Hans Solo with lines like; "Sister, will you for Pete's sake get that light out of my eyes," allows his own capture to insure the escape of the remnants of an alien race. Both these authors use a heroic quality rare in the Swords & Sorcery genre while Leiber's tale, Bazaar of the Bizarre, could be considered altruistic too since in involves Fafhrd rescuing Grey Mouser from his own foolishness.

Don't be fooled by my brief artistic evaluation of these tales, there is plenty of inspirational sorcery and bloodshed in these pages and I've posted the book at Paperback Swap for any who would like to read it.

Goodwill of San Diego

Yeah, I live in East Tennessee so why do I have a post titled Goodwill of San Diego? I think this may have been covered before but, if you have a book acquisition problem, as I do, do not visit this e-bay vendor;

Goodwill Industries of San Diego

I believe one of the other FRPG blogs may have mentioned this e-bay book vendor but I can't recall which blog it may have been. A few days ago I found the Pazio Planet Stories printing of R. E. Howard's Almuric through this Goodwill sale. The San Diego Goodwill only seems to sell books through e-bay and there are many more interesting books in their sell that gamers would be likely to enjoy reading and owning.

For example;

The Complete Stories of Theodore Sturgeon

and The Gormenghast Novels of Mervyn Peake

I've given you all fair warning. Do not visit that vendor if you have a book acquisition problem. Happy reading!

Paizo Planet Stories, a question for the OSR blog o sphere

If you've read my blog you should have no doubt that I'm a bit nostalgic about books. And, as if I needed some more books, I feel the need to acquire the more of the Planet Stories publication series by Paizo. But I have searched high and low across the internet and can not find any complete list of the books that have been published in this series. Perhaps I haven't use my google-fu to my best ability on the Paizo website?

Can any of my fellow grognards inform me of such a list at some internet location?

Thanks and have a great Friday!

H. P. Lovecraft's The Dunwitch Horror; pulp fiction giveaway

Two months ago I had the pleasure of visiting one of our local flea malls in Sweetwater Tn. I call it a flea mall because this market was as large as many modern shopping centers. The main building is an industrial size warehouse that is, at least, 100 yards long. I was happy to find, among the cheap Asian tools, Nascar banners, Avon, silk screened purses and cell phone booths, a book dealer. I purchased Lin Carter's Year's Best of Fantasy Stories Vol. 2 and Lovecraft's The Dunwich Horror which still has the price of $1.75 pasted on the back.

I had a copy of The Loved Dead, a collection of Lovecraft inspired tales, which I attempted to read last year and this was my only previous experience reading Lovecraft. I didn't read half the stories in The Loved Dead before I became bored with the content and posted the book on Paperback Swap. I'm glad to say that the stories collected in my $1.75 edition of The Dunwich Horror have fulfilled the legendary status associated with Mr. Lovecraft's writing.

This edition was published in 1969 and has seven short stories and a forward by August Dereleth. The first tale that really caught my attention was Pickman’s Model. This is the tale of a painter who produces ghoulish images. “Boston never had a greater painter than Richard Upton Pickman… Any magazine-cover hack can splash paint around wildly and call it a nightmare or a Witches’ Sabbath or a portrait of the devil, but only a great painter can make such a thing really scare or ring true.” Lovecraft could have been describing his on writing with this description. I’ve never read many vampire novels, Edgar Allen Poe or Steven King and the tales in The Loved Dead bored me because they were not scary. The seven tales in this edition The Dunwich Horror are, nearly all, creepy if not creepy to the point of horror.

The subsequent tale, The Rats in the Walls, gets high marks for creepiness too. In this story a New England gentleman extensively restores his family estate only to discover that the legends associated with his distant ancestors were true. The ancestral home was built above a pit where prehistoric rituals were practiced and they were not rituals to the God of the Harvest.

A majority of these tales, including The Rats in the Walls, The Hunter of the Dark, The Dunwich Horror and The Thing on the Doorstep, involve Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos. Each of these provides additional information about the mysteries of the Great Old Ones, the alien horrors central to the Cthulhu Mythos. Lovecraft’s talent is that he does not depend on monsters of violence to provide the horror of his tales. He will provide a familiar historical background and then crack that background wide open to questions of; “How much do we really know about the Salem Witch Trials?” Certainly, the Great Old Ones are monsters with an ever increasing potential for violence but placing these mysteries into 20th. Century New England mixes the familiar with the unknown for maximum creepiness.

So, before this opinion piece becomse an essay, I really enjoyed reading Lovecraft and was happy to find that many of his works are available as Google Books. I can certainly agree that Lovecraft was a major influence on AD&D, as listed in Appendix N of the DMG, since these are tales of mystery, occult magic, monstrous outsiders and, often, investigation of unknown geography.

As I was reading the book many of the pages became detached from the spine but I managed to salvage all the pages. I’m offering this book free to anyone who cares to read it, just leave a comment and e-mail your snail mail address to ccreel at yahoo dot com, I’ll be glad to mail the book to anywhere in the U.S.