Weekend Roundup: Deities of Erol Otus and other Makers

It started when +Chris Kutalik, Lord of the Hill Cantons, posted about some apparent deities and demons that the esteemed Erol of the Otuses had created in a little AD&D tome you might know called Deities & Demigods.

And he proceeded to name them. Not content with this act of co-creation, he then set his sights on another image from the same tome, the cover page illustration, and named them as well.

Spurred into action, +trey causey set about naming this latter pantheon himself, and came up with the following:

It has spurred me to not only follow anyone else who has begun their own pantheons based on this artwork, but also to look at the pantheons of Calidar that +Bruce Heard is currently working on as part of his recently funded Kickstarter for an expansion of the Calidar canon.

Thoughts about gods are in the air, it seems.

UPDATE:

It seems that +Mark Craddock is working on a related project. His ongoing work on the Clerics of the Otus Pantheon can be found at his blog.

Non-Weekend Roundup Links of Awesomeness

I have been remiss in my blogging duties due to the move, and a singular lack of consistent internet access.

Here are some links that caught my interest when all I could count on was a quick "browse and link-save" online:

• 
  Bat in the Attic's take on the history of humanoids in his campaign world 
• a post on Errant RPG about the Gnoll: eater of men
• Doctor Warlock's Elements of a Good Dungeon-Crawl 
• Old School Heretic's World Building Link collection 
• Michael Curtis unearths a Gardner Fox gem from the pages of Dragon magazine 

Weekend Roundup: March 12, 2011

Not necessarily the week in review as far as blog posts is concerned, but certainly a roundup of blog posts that caught my eye this week.

On System:
Bat In The Attic - Mechanical Complexity of D&D Part I
Bat In The Attic - Mechanical Complexity of D&D Part II
Lord Kilgore - Multiple Attacks
Lord Kilgore - Momentum

As a system tinkerer, I was drawn not only to the exploration of rules from various incarnations of D&D by Rob Conley, but also to Lord Kilgore's continuous tinkering with his D&D-inspired ruleset.

On Setting:
Bat In The Attic - Medieval Farming Year
Ever curious about verisimilitude in a pseudo-medieval fantasy setting, I enjoyed the post and the links on medieval farming (and the sheer number of resources dedicated to it in a given society), and realized how burning a series of farmland's entire yield of crops could easily be considered grounds for bloody retribution.

Blood of Prokopius - Mining Some Circa 1981 Gold
Always fond of FrDave's posts on religion and D&D, I found this post echoing my own thoughts on monotheistic religions not only in fantasy settings, but also in science fiction settings. Perhaps this was part of the appeal that Fading Suns had on me. Must recruit this guy into Fading Suns when 3rd Edition comes out! Or at least tap him as a resource.

From the Sorceror's Skull - In Any Language
The art posted here from the Swedish RPG Drakar och Demoner (Dragons & Demons) is awesome, but it also reminds me how by just changing the art and the rules treatment of monsters in fantasy RPGs can give gameplay that unpredictable, exploratory feel.

Fire in the Jungle - Tunnels in the Jungle
While the post on Vietnam tunnels does ignite some rationale for dungeons and stirs memories about the Iwo Jima tunnels in WWII, it is the plaster-filled ant colony image that really stirs the imagination and dredges up ancient memories of a Bill Homeyer campaign where a seemingly infinite (and oddly monsterless) staircase stretches down into the pits of hell. Awesome.

On OSR:
Lands of Ara - Top 15 Classic OSR Blog Posts: On Game Design and Campaign Resources
The Society of Torch Pole and Rope - An Evaluation of Watchfires & Thrones: Year One
Swords Against The Outer Dark - My Message to the OSR
Salon.com - How Dungeons & Dragons Changed My Life

Though I don't really game OSR these days, out of nostalgia and an attempt to understand the effect that D&D (and the hobby of RPGs as a whole) has had on my life, I find myself drawn to these posts for various reasons.