Sci-Fi Updates

During my recent blogging hiatus, a couple interesting things happened on the science-fiction front:

1. Goblinoid Games' Starships and Spacemen 2nd Edition came out! I was one of the project's initial backers on Kickstarter, so my hardback copy arrived in the mail a few weeks ago.

Photo courtesy of Dan Proctor

While I would one day love to run a pure S&S game, right now I am so busy running Labyrinth Lord games that this fine product is most likely going to see immediate use as a supplement to the games I've already got running. That is, I will cherry pick robots and equipment and monsters and the like from the S&S rulebook for use in my ongoing Arandish LL campaigns. Remember that I warned you long ago about my penchant  for including sci-fi elements in my fantasy. Gonzo lives!

2. The 2013 Traveller Calendar also became available. I now quote from an email sent by Marc Miller to the Traveller5 mailing list:

"The annual Traveller Calendar was the brainchild of Andrew Boulton, who for the past several years has assembled a truly talented band of artists to produce the calendar, proceeds of which went to various good causes.

"Sadly Andrew passed away this year and it looked like the next calendar would not happen. But the artists would not let that happen: Ian Stead stepped forward to manage the project; the artists all stepped forward with truly great Traveller art, and all wanted to make this a tribute to Andrew.

"Everyone donated their time; the Traveller permissions and licensing (as always) was donated.

"Now you are the last link in the chain: we hope you enjoy this calendar as much as we enjoyed putting it together."

The print version of the 2013 Traveller Calendar is available at Lulu and the PDF version at DriveThruRPG

Starships and Spacemen 2nd Ed. Needs Your Support

Dan Proctor just announced the start of the IndieGoGo Campaign for Starships and Spacemen, the forthcoming Labyrinth Lord-compatible sci-fi game from Goblinoid Games! I have been eagerly awaiting this release for some time now, and I strongly urge -- no, I beg -- you to please help fund this worthy project so that several months from now I can finally hold it in my hot little hands. Check out the Goblinoid Games blog for complete details, but here is a snippet of the product description:

Starships & Spacemen was first released back in 1978, only the second science fiction RPG ever to be released.

This second edition of the classic game is compatible with Labyrinth Lord and Mutant Future. The best elements of the first edition have been kept--the classes and subclasses, the excellent starship rules, and the space adventuring rules. Classes, races, and abilities have been made more in line with Labyrinth Lord.

This second edition has elements that let you customize the style of play whether you prefer an "original series" feel, a "next generation" feel, or something in between.

Sounds awesome, right? Please make your pledge today!

My LL Referee Screen

Since I've been so busy with other non-game-related stuff lately, I haven't had a chance to show off my AWESOME Labyrinth Lord Referee Screen, which came (pre-ordered) in the mail several weeks ago. Here it is:

The Labyrinth Lord Referee Screen!

Kudos to Dan Proctor of Goblinoid Games for making this project happen.  I have been using my screen for the past couple sessions I've refereed, and it is just terrific. It's very well-organized (my beloved reaction roll tables are front and center!) and check out the great art by Steve Zieser.  I am particularly fond of the left-hand panel depicting (what I take to be) the thief and his torch-bearing associate:

The Referee Screen interior -- reaction roll tables in the middle!

Kudos to Goblinoid Games for a job well done and a fine, very useful product!

Even Roscoe the cat is interested in the LL Referee Screen!

I'm In Love With My AEC

My hardbound copy of Daniel Proctor's Advanced Edition Companion arrived a couple of days ago, and while I have been too busy to post about it until now, I sure have been enjoying the hell out of it.  What follows will be more rave than review, but allow me enumerate why I think this is an important, must-have book:

First, as is typical of Goblinoid Games publications, the presentation is very clear and professional.  This renders the book extremely easy to use.  If I have a minor complaint on this front it is that there is no index -- I am a big index user -- but on the other hand, that may not really be necessary here since (I think) the book to some extent presumes an audience familiar with the organizational scheme of the Labyrinth Lord basic rules, which AEC emulates.  That is, generally speaking, both books begin with attributes and character classes, then money and equipment, then spells, then encounters and monsters, etc.  There are some minor differences, e.g., AEC puts "New Magic Items" before "New Monsters," but this is made clear on its Table of Contents and I haven't actually had any trouble finding what I wanted to in the AEC yet.

Oh, the monsters!  I suppose as a referee it is inevitable that I would be getting a lot more mileage out of the "Monsters" section, than, say, the "Character Classes" section. . . but wow, I really think the "New Monsters" section alone is practically worth the cover price of this book.  It basically gives us all the old Monster Manual classics -- the Beholder (er, Eye of Terror, which by the way is an excellent re-name), the Shambling Mound, the Xorn, the Remorhaz, and, of course, the demons, including Our Lord Orcus -- statted for OSR play.  On a purely practical level, from the referee's point of view, all the number-crunching that must have gone into this part of the AEC equals a major time savings to me, and I am grateful for its existence.  Maybe my desire to have other people do the number-crunching makes me a lazy referee, but if so, then the New Monsters section of the AEC -- and arguably the whole AEC -- is a great gift to lazy referees everywhere.

To top this off, the AEC includes a complete list of Labyrinth Lord monsters by HD, an incredibly useful tool for referees who want to see the best options for stocking a given dungeon level in an at-a-glance format.  Very useful indeed.

In truth, I haven't ventured much past the monsters and new spells yet -- I told you this wasn't going to be a full-blown review.  I look forward to inspecting the sections on old AD&D classes like druids and rangers very soon, but right now I am stuck on my beloved demons and their nefarious associates on the pages of the "New Monsters" section.  But in a way, this speaks to one of the great strengths of the AEC: its modularity.  The AEC embodies the quintessential spirit of the OSR precisely because it is intended to be used differently by every gamer who picks it up.  Along this line, allow me to close with a few words quoted from Dan Proctor's "Foreword" to the AEC:

[When] I think about the way my friends and I had always played the "advanced" [AD&D] rules it was essentially like the original classic game (i.e. Labyrinth Lord) with the added monsters, treasures, classes, and some other rules from first edition. So the goal in writing the Advanced Edition Companion (AEC) was to create an expansion of Labyrinth Lord that is a natural evolution (with compatibility) of advanced first edition but keeping the slick original game engine. [. . .]

This book presents the essential first edition rules, all as open game content, and combined with Labyrinth Lord there is a vast sum of open content available to everyone, forever.

That is an admirable achievement.  THANKS DAN for providing the old school community with this invaluable resource.

Hill Orcs Kick Ass - And So Does Goblinoid's AEC!

In a recent post on his excellent "Behind the Screen" blog, my friend Carl shared a great new monster that I am rather taken with: the Hill Orc.  Hill orcs are bigger and badder than their typical orcish cousins, are greenish rather than grayish, and favor poleaxes as their main weapons.  As Carl writes:

[Hill Orcs] can be easily recognized by the floppy wide-brimmed hats they wear to shield their eyes from the daylight, and the striped kilts emblazoned with their clan colors.  Hill Orc warriors share a special bond with the giant dogs that serve as mount and companion; as a young hill orc draws closer to the initiation ceremony that will mark his entrance into the warrior fraternities, a puppy is selected for him by the shaman. For the next year, the young orc must spend all of his time with his dog, training it and building a bond of mutual love and trust strong enough to survive the rigors of battle.

Wow!  Big poleaxe-wielding orcs who ride wargs!  How can I resist?  Yet Carl's post only includes stats for these creatures in the modified D&D 3.5 system he was using when he created them.  So what does a poor old-school Labyrinth Lord like me do?  Convert this great monster to Labyrinth Lord, of course!  [I have Carl's blessing to post this conversion, and I welcome comments from him or anybody else if I miss anything here.]

Hill Orc
# Encountered: 2d4 (3d8)
Alignment: Chaotic
Move: 120’ (40’)
AC: 4
HD: 2
Attacks: 1 (claw or weapon)
Damage: 1d6 / weapon damage
Save: F2
Morale: 8
Hoard Class: XVIII
XP: 20

Like standard orcs, Hill Orcs suffer a penalty of –1 to hit rolls when in sunlight - unless they are wearing their usual protective brimmed hats.  There are Hill Orc leaders who fight as 3 HD monsters.  On Ara, Hill Orcs live in the northern and eastern mountains of Telengard, and could be substituted into this encounter table -- maybe swap "Hill Orc" in for result 23, Neanderthal, or result 19, Werewolf.
Rage: Hill Orcs can fly into a combat rage like a berserker.  During a rage, which lasts 1-4 rounds, the Hill Orc gets -2 to AC, +1 to hit, and +2 to all inflicted damage.  For 1-4 rounds after the rage subsides, the Hill Orc loses all initiative and suffers a -1 penalty to hit and -1 to inflicted damage. 
Wolf mounts: For a hill orc's canine mount, I would simply use the Dire Wolf stats from p. 102 of Labyrinth Lord.

[Edit: Check out this badass illustration of a Hill Orc by Eli Arndt.]

Speaking of statting up new monsters, last weekend I was working on a creature that I hope my Labyrinth Lord party does not encounter for quite some time, for it is an undead version of a rather powerful classic monster from AD&D.  I was working on my undead version's stat block and had pulled out my 1e Monster Manual to check out the official characteristics of the original, non-undead version of the creature, when it suddenly dawned on me: Wait a minute!  I have a pdf of the Labyrinth Lord Society member's sneak preview of the Advanced Edition Companion!!  Why the hell am I dragging out my old Monster Manual when the stats I need are probably already in the AEC?? 

And indeed, what a glorious moment it was when I opened that AEC pdf and found the exact monster I was looking for, statted for Labyrinth Lord!  This made my undead-ification of the monster go very smoothly and swiftly, and will no doubt be the first of many successful encounters I have with the AEC.  Don't get me wrong, I am still quite happy to have possession of my 1e books, for obviously there is information, nuance, and nostalgia there that are not reproduced (nor reproducible) in AEC.  But in terms of a practical working text that will be of immense help to me in my current Labyrinth Lord campaign, I can hardly imagine a more useful book than the AEC right now.

Devotees will remember that I have been eagerly anticipating the Advanced Edition Companion since at least late October, in part because I am one of those people whose "default" rules system from the old days was a kind of "AD&D lite" approach that made primary use of the three core AD&D books, which the AEC emulates.   So I was thrilled to learn yesterday that the Advanced Edition Companion is finally out in print form!  I have ordered my copy and eagerly await its arrival.  I know I am going to make much use of this tome over the coming months and years.  Great job Daniel Proctor and Goblinoid Games!

Musings In Response to Knockspell #3

I got my copy of Knockspell #3 in the mail today.  I am a print fetishist and like real books, for many of the same reasons that James Raggi IV has so insightfully discussed.  As I always teach my college writing students, print sources -- real books -- are more permanent and credible sources of information than most web-based sources in part because someone (the publisher) ponied up the money to have the text fact-checked, copy edited, vetted, play-tested, etc. BEFORE it reached the public.  Don't get me wrong, I love using online sources as well, and (obviously) I have discovered and advocate the particular joys of reading blogs.  I think blogs and other online media forms are indeed the future, and in many ways are already the present -- there is an immediacy and interactivity to be found on the web that is invaluable for trotting out the newest and freshest raw ideas and getting valuable feedback.  Yet I do perceive a difference (for me anyway) between what I post and read in blogs and what I get in a fine print publication like Knockspell #3.  There is something, well, weightier about having that bound publication with shiny covers sitting there in my hand.  Like what's in there is somehow precious.  (I sound like Gollum.)

I cannot really give a content-specific "review" of the mag, for I am already planning to use some of the adventures and trap ideas from Knockspell #3 in my forthcoming Arandish campaign, and I don't want to spoil any surprises for players of mine who might read this.  I suppose the fact that I found three or four offerings (parts of two mini-modules, one trap, and the badass random ruin generator!) that are of immediate appeal and use to me, all in one issue, says a great deal about the quality of this publication and its contributors.  The variety of stuff packed into Knockspell #3's 64 pages is impressive -- there are three complete mini-modules, a few random tables and one random generator, a few theory articles, and two particularly strong entries: the Swords and Wizardry-based Magician Class and alternative magic system by Akrasia, and the vile (and thus highly appealing) Anti-Paladin class by Kellri.  I don't allow paladins in Ara, but now, reading Kellri's great re-imagining, I sure as hell am allowing anti-paladins!

Which leads me to my big "aha" moment with this magazine.  As I leafed through it tonight, really enjoying the alternative magic system devised by Akrasia and thinking about its potential applicability to Ara, I began to get my first palpable sense of what the original 1974-77 iteration of D&D might feel like to play.  As I have mentioned before, I came of age with the Holmes Basic Set followed closely by many years with AD&D.  So it is no wonder that upon my glorious return to the old-school gaming hobby I should gravitate toward Labyrinth Lord (a clone of Moldvay Basic, which follows Holmes) and Goblinoid's forthcoming Advanced Edition Companion (which provides AD&D content in Labyrinth Lord terms).  But now, with the arrival of Knockspell #3 at my door, I may be hearing for the first time the siren song of the original Gygax and Arneson version of D&D.  I am at least encouraged, based upon the quality of Knockspell #3 including its terrific Pete Mullen cover, that an investment in Black Blade Publishing's Swords and Wizardry Core Rulebook would be a sound investment once some more cash rolls into the old coffers around here.  I know I would enjoy reading the book -- I couldn't get enough of gaming rulebooks as a kid, and I suppose I am no different now -- and I might even get inspired to play the S&W system in due time. . . 

In the end, for me and my primitive cave-man mind, I still like to read things in hard copy, in print, especially important things like old-school retro-clone game manuals and supplements.  It makes the consumer in me happy to know that there are artful, high-quality products like Knockspell #3 out there for me and the other members of my hobby to enjoy, use, archive, and cherish. I highly recommend this product for any old-school gamer.

I Finally Got Some Frikkin' Money

My parents were in town for a visit this past couple of days, and after a tasty Indian dinner last night, they and my girlfriend and I happened to walk past my favorite local game store, into which I couldn't resist poking my head, and guess what they had, to my delight?  A pristine used copy of the 1e AD&D Monster Manual, the last of the original AD&D core rulebooks I need for my (newly restored) collection.  Sweetening the deal was the fact that my mom bought it for me. . . just like she and dad bought me that first Holmes D&D Boxed set back in '82.  Truly, some things never change.  A big score -- thanks mom!

That Monster Manual haul was a harbinger of further happy things to come, because today, after suffering through a bit of a cash flow slowdown over the past couple of weeks, some unexpected money came into the coffers, so I immediately rushed online and ordered my own print copy of the Labyrinth Lord Revised Edition -- up until now I have been making do with a print copy of the un-revised LL rulebook lent to me by my generous friend (and Mutant Lord) Carl, as well as a free download of the Revised Edition Core Rules pdf.  Further, while I was at the Goblinoid Games online print store I also bought an additional secret goodie that I will be reviewing with an eye for possible incorporation into my upcoming Arandish Labyrinth Lord campaign. Since I am one of those people who fetishizes books and printed things, I am extremely thrilled to think that my LL books are being bound as I type this and are soon to be shipped my way!   Huzzah!

Now I just have to wait for James Raggi IV to get The Grinding Gear up on the Lamentations of the Flame Princess web store. . .