B/X WW2 & Mail Call 05-23-2011

I already had a copy of the Wizards book,which was kind of lackluster in my opinion, and I had previously read the Dwarves book, which I thought was the best of the race handbooks; the real trophy here for me was the Ninja book, which I had only seen once before and never had a chance to read. The Complete Ninja Handbook represents TSR's only real attempt to support Oriental Adventures in 2nd edition AD&D other than the updated monsters of the Kara-Tur Monstrous Compendium add on. Given my great love for 1st edition Oriental Adventures, but my dislike for it's seriously broken Ninja class I am kind of looking forward to checking this out.

On the B/X WW2 front I have made contact with another group of potential playtesters, centered around my old gaming buddy Lance W. who is almost always up for some WW2 action. His dad served in a US Army Airborne unit in the Pacific during the war and was a Flamethrower guy, they always had a bunch of cool stuff around the house when I was a kid that he had brought back from the war, including a longbow from New Guinea that Lance and I broke trying to use. Apparently that stuff gets all brittle when it's been hanging on a wall for decades as a decoration. I kind of wish we had paid more attention to his stories about the war when we were kids since now he isn't around to ask about the details. Same thing with my mom's older brothers and my father's father, all of them had 1st hand experience of the war, they were kind of thrilled that someone was interested in hearing about it, but I was too young to know the right questions to ask.

Along with that serious downer, I have apparently caught a cold and I hate summer colds the worst; so that's probably soured my mood somewhat, tired and all from cold meds.