This Blog

Pictured- The Arms of the Lady Mattea Di Luna, mundanely known as my lovely wife Mona, my inspiration in all things.

I hope my blog is not getting stale. I noticed that I lost a follower today, it's happened before and it always kind of bums me out, like I let down somebody that was expecting something better of me. My blog was never really supposed to attract readers at all honestly, it was just supposed to be a writing exercise to help me organize my thoughts about the stuff I like to do. I just happened to discover the OSR through blogging and made it a big part of my life and what I blog about. Despite my desire to blog more about a number of things, things happening in my life, good, bad and just time consuming, have left me with less time to devote to blogging as regularly as I'd like to; so maybe that's the reason that I lost a follower, or maybe they just moved on in their interests. I can't tell who it was, as much as I'd like to have a personal relationship with everyone that reads my blog, it's not like it was when there were only a dozen or so of you; I can't keep close track anymore; I'll miss you just the same because it feels like a personal failing on my part.

Anyway, on to less maudlin things, I am actually trying to collect my thoughts for a review/retrospective on the Cook/Marsh Expert Book. I just want it to be good, not simply me saying something like "Cook and Marsh continued on in the vein set forth by Moldvay and it continued to be excellent"; while true, it's somewhat lackluster in comparison to the multi-part review that Moldvay's Basic book got. I am afraid I am going to need to go through it again and actually take notes, section by section, like I did with the Moldvay Basic book and make the comparisons to AD&D, that I keep trying to avoid doing.

I offered up the Labyrinth Lord Advanced Edition Companion as a supplement to B/X for my players since there was some grumbling initially, at character generation and later with the higher mortality rate, about the lack of AD&D-isms in B/X. To my real surprise, every one of my players that I have spoken to so far has rejected it, even the one that really missed the AD&D death at -10HP rule; he stated that he was "...in this [Basic D&D] mode now.", and would rather just stick with it. My kids, who had originally missed separate races and classes, were all like, "We don't care about that now.". My wife never really cared which rules set we used. Audra is brand new to RPGs at all, so it really doesn't matter to her. Lee Ann I haven't spoken to yet, because she's always working lately, they're short RNs where she works; I suspect will not care either, although she had never played Basic D&D before I introduced her to it. Dalton I haven't spoken to yet either, but I strongly suspect he will prefer to stay with B/X, because he is planning on switching his newbies from AD&D to B/X-LL ASAP.

We play the Anarchy of Stephen and Matilda campaign this weekend, so I will get a chance to talk in person with everyone that I haven't yet. This weekend I plan to run Tim Shorts adventure "Knowledge Illuminates", so I am hoping everyone can make it. I am still reading 1215 Year of the Magna Carta, but I am better than half way through, which I consider pretty good since I am mostly reading it in the morning before breakfast and right before I go to bed at night. I suppose I could cut down on my OSR blog reading and really knuckle down on this whole getting more blogging/reading/campaign preparation done, but I get so many cool ideas from the OSR blogosphere. Even if they aren't things I would ever use, they keep me on my creative toes, you know what I mean?

In non-RPG news, I started my diet for real yesterday and started exercising because I found out that my Barony is hosting the Kingdom of Aethelmearc's Spring Crown Tourney, and it's holding it in Brewerton, NY; a town I practically grew up in, because it is my friend Darryl's hometown. The Tourney is being held the week before my wife's birthday and I found out about it on Valentine's day. This strikes me as too much coincidence to not be fate guiding my hand and forcing me towards this goal, so I am going to bust my ass to shake off the rust as a fighter, lose some fat and gain some muscle over the next three months and, hopefully, make my wife a Princess for her birthday. This is not an impossible goal, I have achieved similar goals in the past, just not won the Crown, although I came close, twice. This time, Deus lo volt!