Mongol Month Continues

With Viking content - I DMed my "Vikings of Dvergrholm" campaign yesterday after a month long hiatus. The PCs (and 1 NPC) left the Dwarven village of Nordlund and headed out towards the ancient Dwarven fortress (mega-dungeon) that they are supposed to be liberating as the focus of this campaign. The entire thing almost got sidelined when they got a random encounter with a pack of wolves, that's a tough encounter for a first level party and there were nine wolves encountered. The wolves also won initiative and attacked on the first round, taking down two of the party's Fighters, although this is an almost entirely Fighter based party, so pretty much no matter who got hit it was likely to be a Fighter. Viking Campaign Sourcebook rules in effect limited choices and the only Magic-User in the party had already died in the first outing. Nobody else wanted to play a Magic-User because they were limited in their spell selection by school. They beat the encounter ultimately though and then had to turn back for town, empty handed, to heal up and try again later.

The second go was much easier. They had no random encounters on the way to the dungeon and didn't get lost or stumble across any planned encounters. When confronted with the choice of three identical entrances though, they chose the one on the left, because they didn't think to ask the Dwarves for anything more than directions and these Dwarves don't really volunteer a lot of information; so, of course, it was one of the two trapped entrances, but not the worst. In fact, you might not consider it a trap at all under different circumstances, but it did lock them in the dungeon with no way back out (they don't have a Thief to pick the locks, or any excavation tools), and the only way forward took them to the third level of the dungeon.

Once they got down to the third level they discovered that their entrance was in the back of a tiny room and it was a secret door on the dungeon side, so it's really more like a secret escape tunnel from the third level to the surface, but it unfortunately locks automatically when the doors close and the doors close when the next door is opened, if you haven't already manually closed them or made some provision to jam them open. Anyway, they left their tiny room and entered the dungeon proper and immediately got a random encounter with five Ogres, which you would think would have smeared a first level party, but in a 10'x10' corridor they could channelize the Ogre's approach and only one at a time could move to attack. The party easily used superior tactics to defeat the Ogres and the Ogres refused to fail morale checks, and thus kept coming on to the slaughter. All five were dead in three rounds of combat, but Mona's character Grimhild did crit the leader on round one for 23 points of damage, one-shotting him after he missed her. Two rounds later, she did the same thing again to the last one.

We wrapped up the session after that, we had started late and ended a little earlier than usual, but it was a pretty good time and we had a ton of awesome food to go with our game too. Maybe I should get a picture of the food Mona makes for the game sometime?

Anyway, in other Viking news, I hope to announce the winners of the OPD contest I ran last month tomorrow. I am waiting to hear the results from a couple of judges still, then I'll tally up the points and declare the winners. Good luck to everyone, and thanks to everyone who participated.

I also got this stuff on EBay, just to use as inspiration for my Viking campaign, I don't remember if I shared the pics with you all-

Now, something related to the Mongols just to keep my theme for the month. Did you all know that Genghis Khan invented the concept of diplomatic immunity? The Mongol Empire also strictly adhered to a practice of religious freedom and tolerance.

Keeping you all up to date

I have not posted to my blog in a couple of days now because one of my players, Dalton, had his dad pass away. He's 19 years old and now both of his parents are dead. I turn 43 later this month and both of mine are still alive, in fact today is my mother's 68th birthday. I can not imagine being in Dalton's place. His loss has kind of made me think about a lot of different things, mortality being one, my mark on the world being another.

I am not saying that I am going to quit gaming or anything radical, it's just that this blog is, apparently, a part of the legacy I am going to leave behind, so too are the games I have DMed or played in; almost everything I have done in my adult life has been in some way a form of entertainment for, usually, a small group of people. I doubt more than a few hundred people have ever seen the low budget horror film I was in, and I haven't been in a play since middle school. But I have DMed, conservatively, over the last 30+ years, more than 1000 games of D&D of various editions up through 3.5 and Hackmaster 4th edition.

I have also run games in other systems, WEG D6 Star Wars and WotC D20, Twilight 2000 1st, 2nd and 2.2 editions, Boot Hill, Star Frontiers, Marvel Super Heroes, and who knows what else I can't remember off the top of my head. My wife tells me I should be a novelist, because I am a good GM. I think she's wrong, I set up good scenarios for people to react to, and I am quick on enough on my feet to counter-react in realistic ways. I've never carried anything very good, except academic papers, past about 20 pages. I can write decent short stories, not novels.


I don't know where I am really going with this, it's turning into one of my more rambling rambles, so I guess I will just wrap it up here and show you the picture of the book I got in the mail today.

I bought it so I'd have even more background material for my 43 AD game, but that doesn't seem likely to start soon now with Dalton's recent loss, he's a key player for me and I consider him a protege of sorts. I won't start anything until he's good to go.

And now for a change of pace and game.

Instead of my planned OSR games or the L5R RPG that I keep hoping will break out here, or even the D20 Star Wars game that I had my players actually make characters for; we're going to admit that my home gaming group is a broken thing and take it on the road with a new game- 43 AD.

There are a lot of reasons why my home group is broken, two of my adult players are in new jobs and don't have time to play. One of the other adult players is the girlfriend of one that just started a new job, and was only coming to spend time with him. My oldest daughter is on medication that makes it too difficult for her to concentrate for any real length of time. My son has decided he really prefers playing 4th edition D&D with his buddies to playing old school D&D at home with his family and his parent's friends. My youngest daughter, oddly enough, only wants to play when one of the family friends is playing. Lastly, my long suffering wife is sick of playing dungeon mom, keeping the party coordinated and moving along, all that sort of stuff. She never really likes the role of party leader anyway, but when it's just her and the kids playing, it kind of naturally falls to her. My son also chafes at that, because he thinks he'd be a more suitable party leader, but when that was tried, he was ineffective and kind of self serving.

So, I've been reading through 43 AD, from Zozer games, I bought it last month. I am pretty sure that's when it came out. See, I have the people I play Dawn Patrol with Big Darryl and Little Darryl, Dalton and maybe my son John would be interested in this; and I think I could get some more people to show up for an RPG; but both Darryls HATE D&D for opposite reasons.

For Big Darryl, who gets first mention out of respect for his age, he hates D&D because it was too abstract, not rules crunchy enough and not realistic enough. He likes games where you might get crippling wounds that last forever, where you only get better at skills you actually use, stuff like that. He was really into DragonQuest back in the day, probably just because it was an RPG written by SPI, a wargame company known for it's strict simulationist approach.

For Little Darryl, he hates D&D because he can't divorce it in his mind from 3e. He actually was none too fond of 2nd edition either, but 3e was the straw that broke the camel's back for him too. I went back to 1st edition AD&D and B/X, he went to FUDGE and other extremely rules-lite games. FUDGE-on-the-fly is his favorite way to play his favorite game, that's how rules-lite he went; although he has expressed a fondness for Savage Worlds too. He also has another gaming group he plays with that have played a whole bunch of different indie RPGs, some of which I've heard of, others not. They are almost universally story oriented rules-lite systems though.

For my part, I think I could use a little experience away from D&D and it's derivatives for a while, despite having a fairly vast collection of games, I really haven't played anything that wasn't D&D, with the exception of Ashli's brief Hackmaster Basic campaign she ran for the family when she was a junior in high school, so 3 years ago or so, I played a different system. I haven't GMed anything non-D&D, unless you really count 4th edition Hackmaster as NOT D&D or 3e as NOT D&D, since I am going to guess the late 1980s or early 1990s.

Dalton is young and has most of his gaming experience at my table, so his horizons could stand to be expanded too I guess. I have given him a lot of books to read, but I don't think he's played any of them, much less GMed them. He does have a core group in Oswego, NY, that he DMs for, but apparently it's as dysfunctional currently as my home group.

Now, 43 AD is a pretty rules-lite system, so little Darryl will be pleased, but it has the realism requirements that Big Darryl likes too, armor reduces damage for instance instead of making you harder to hit, that always got him going about D&D. It also has the advantage of being able to be used as a gateway backstory role playing experience for my Garnia campaign world if things work out as I hope they will. Additionally, we, and by we I mean Little Darryl and I, plan to run simultaneous 43 AD and Warband (the Celtic character's supplement for 43 AD) campaigns, alternating adventures and having an impact on each other's storylines. I suggested that and he agreed that it would be pretty cool. We haven't set it in stone yet, but it is most likely I'll be up to bat first for GM duties with the Roman half of the campaign, which means I get to play a Briton!

Ordinarily, I'd want to do this with two completely different groups of players, but apparently I can't scrape together enough role playing gamers in central New York to make that sort of thing happen. Anyone getting this signal within driving distance of, roughly, just north of Cicero, NY that wants to play in an RPG that will be kind of irregularly scheduled during the summer, and if it lasts, most Saturdays after school starts, is welcomed to leave a comment.

So, here's hoping this new venture works out. It's currently dependent on the old man wanting to try some role playing again rather than sticking strictly to a schedule of wargaming. I hope that won't be a problem, because at 70, his wargaming skills have lost their sharpness. Either that or Little Darryl and I are just that much better than he is now, which I find unlikely. In either case it's sad for me, the man was like a father to me growing up and I hate having to take it easy on him in a wargame.

Dawn Patrol and Old School Battlestar Galactica

But first, this picture I randomly ran across on another blog of some Scythians, among the oldest school Steppe Warriors out there; so it's a shout out to my old Guildies from AOL's version of Neverwinter Nights and Yurt dwelling folk everywhere.

Next, I ran across these pics on another blog.

Now I am not generally a huge fan of Sci-Fi cross-overs, but seeing the Cylon on the Enterprise bridge was pretty cool. The second one just reminded me of how I didn't get my Gold Cylon when I sent away for it. Which reminded me of how I was similarly screwed out of this-

What is it with me NOT getting Battlestar Galactica stuff when I was a kid? Was it Karma because I was the only kid I knew that got the Colonial Viper for Christmas that year? Everyone else got stuck with the lame almost viper toys, or, if they were lucky like two of my friends, got the Cylon Raider.

What were they thinking there? Kids will love having a ship never seen on the show? A Viper-esque thing on wheels will be great! Don't toy company execs actually ever have kids look at their proposed toys? Because the Viper and the Raider were the only ones they produced that were necessary. A shuttle might have been nice, or anything in the action figure scale. Action figures with detail and articulation at least as nice as Kenner's Star Wars figures would have made it a competitive line too, as it was I got all of mine as gifts; despite being a HUGE BSG fan (at 9 years old I was apparently their demographic), I knew their action figures were crap. Oddly enough, I have the Muffitt figure sitting on my desk- top shelf, center, under the light, on top of my Cesare Borgia tobacco tin full of old coins, behind a bunch of old school D&D miniatures, mostly Heritage and Ral Partha, some Grenadier or others.

Now I guess that it is apropos to this discussion, in a roundabout way, of BSG that my new copy of Dawn Patrol came in the mail today. Here are the pictures:

It is pretty nearly complete, I didn't count the counters, but the rest of the contents are there except for two maneuver cards used for tailing/being tailed. There are three complete sets of maneuver cards and one set missing two. My wife Mona actually volunteered to make some more sets using her skills with art and graphics programs and I can then print them out onto heavy paper and she'll cut the new decks out. There was also this odd box of counters that doesn't actually go to Dawn Patrol. I've been a Wargamer for three decades and I don't recognize these guys, anyone know what game they're from?

My wife took this picture with our digital camera, because I am impaired at photography, so I thank her for that

Anyway, over the years I have built and rebuilt BSG RPGs, and never got anyone to play with me, even my buddies like Lance who LOVES the original 1978 Battlestar Galactica. How Dawn Patrol fits in to all of this is that in a couple of incarnations of my BSG RPG, I pretty much used Dawn Patrol as a chassis for the fighter combat. Obviously, it needs some modification to make it a space fighter combat game, but, in theory, it works all right. I say in theory, because I never playtested it against anyone but myself. I don't exactly know when I started "designing" games, it seems like I must have been in high school, but that seems kind of late for a BSG project. Probably earlier, I was always stuck chasing the Questing Beast that is the perfect RPG as Big Darryl's Squire, so modifying rules was in my gaming blood from the time I was in junior high I guess.

I don't know how many iterations my BSG RPG went through. I do know that every time some hot new game system came along down the pike I had to see what it had that I could use, modify or be inspired by. I rewrote the WEG D6 Star Wars game into a BSG RPG, that was dead simple, all you really have to do is remove the Jedi and change some terminology. I had an entire GURPS version once, and I didn't even own any GURPS books at the time. Having access to your friends and mentors gaming libraries is a good thing. I am pretty sure I quit trying to put together an original series BSG RPG sometime in the mid 1990s; I am going to guess that I figured if it hadn't happened by then, it just wasn't going to happen. I know I quit before the D20 craze, otherwise I'd probably have driven myself nuts trying to make it happen again and have everyone in my D&D group be all lukewarm on the idea.

Of Yurts, and Books

I have recently decided that my project for this summer is to build a Yurt for camping. Am I taking this Great Khan thing too far? I don't think so. I have been in the SCA for decades now and Yurts are kind of a pain in the ass to set up, but are the palaces of the tent world. I have actually been trying to get my wife Mona to agree to building Yurts for us to live in full time, year round, for about a decade or more, but she is reticent to live in what she refers to as a "glorified tent", despite the fact that there are actually people doing just this very thing in upstate NY. There is even a campground along the Salmon river that uses Yurts for lodges year round. So I figure a really kick-ass camping Yurt may change her mind. Plus they are ecologically sound, reducing our footprint significantly, and I think it would be cool to have each of my kids get their own Yurt, like having a more private bedroom; they're all teenagers now. Ashli will be twenty in October, while her condition currently precludes her from living on her own, I am pretty sure a Yurt of her own would be OK. So I bought these books to help me with my Yurt quest, I haven't had a chance to read them yet, but I imagine they'll be useful, they had good Amazon reviews.

I already had this one from years ago, back then it was simply referred to as the definitive Yurt book. I learned a lot from this book, but I figured more information is always better.

Otherwise I just would have stuck with this one. It's a do it yourself guide to everything Mongolian, including Yurt building, but also clothing and the Uighur alphabet, among other things. It's real hands on, written for SCA folk.

Now, I also mentioned I had been reading some Mongol history recently, this is the book, it apparently accompanied a BBC series I will most likely never get to see. I have read a lot of Mongol history in the past too, this was just something new for me. I have an entire shelf of books devoted to the Mongols actually, with a couple more books on the way soon, not counting the Yurt books of course. Are there any Mongol RPG books out there? Was there ever a GURPS Mongols? I mean, I have TSR's "The Horde" and "Forgotten Realms Horde Campaign" for 2nd edition AD&D, and I bought the companion novels "The Empires Trilogy- Horselords, Dragonwall and Crusade"; spoiler alert- so they can keep the Forgotten Realms at status quo ante bellum they might just as well have never introduced any of the main characters in "The Horde" boxed set, they're all dead or irrelevant by the end of the 3rd book.

As far as history goes, I also got this in the mail today, it was a seminal read for the formation of our Mongol online gaming guild- The Steppe Warriors

And, because I am a giant Mongol nerd, I also got this, but I haven't had a chance to start it yet. I am still finishing up the last series I was writing about.

This copy of the L5R RPG's Boxed set "City of Lies" came in the mail yesterday, funny story, I was bidding on three boxed sets, two of which I had never seen before. They were all from the same seller, so I figured if I won all three I'd just pass this along to Dalton since he has an interest in running the L5R RPG, but I'd save on shipping and all. I got super sniped at the end of the auction on the other two and only won the one I already had.

Lastly, this came in the mail today, another WotC D20 Star Wars Sourcebook. I really liked the New Jedi Order series of novels, so I wanted to see their take on all of it, and, of course, it was an excellent deal.

Mostly About Books Today

I will come clean and admit that I spent the greater part of my day playing Crusader Kings, it's the first time I've booted into Windows in a long time, since November 11th of last year to be exact, but I needed access to some Windows only software that I own so that I could hard code srt files to avi files or other video formats. There is probably free software that does it better available for Linux, but I didn't feel like looking for it and then learning how to use it. I forgot that if you don't run Windows for a long time, and I forget this every time I go months without booting into Windows, that there will be something like two hours worth of updates and scans that need to be run before my computer is really available for anything, so I read for a while, while I kept an eye on my computer.

I've been reading more lately anyway, eastern philosophy and Asian history; not all Japanese stuff either, remember I am the Great Khan. Which leads me to the first bunch of books. I got this book-

at a local Salvation Army thrift shop one day while my wife was busy at a seminar at the County building across the street. I thought it looked cool and I had seen very little in the way of Mongol oriented fantasy. Now, reading novels is how I reward myself for doing research on whatever topic I happen to be researching at the time, and I happened to be researching the Mongols anyway and how I was going to make them work in a fantasy setting. So I did the Mongol history and some Mongol folklore/mythology/religious practices, then I figured I'd dive into this book and see this guy's take on it all. Then I realized it was the sequel to a trilogy, essentially the 4th book in the series, and I was mightily annoyed. So I went on Amazon; where I had just bought the Mongol research book anyway, and I ordered the whole trilogy.

And I read them, as it turns out, it was very helpful to have read them, and they are a self contained story that covers the rest of the fantasy Asia that the author has created. The story mostly takes place in the alt-China, but you roam all over the fantasy Asia and the main character of the "4th book" is a secondary character introduced along the way. They were pretty good though, so I am not too annoyed that I read them.

Next, I guess it's no big secret that I went from Legend of the Five Rings and Rokugan hater to enormous fan. I have been buying up old L5R RPG stuff and Clan War stuff like there's no tomorrow. I bought and read the Clan War novels last year. There was one for each major clan- Scorpion, Unicorn, Crane, Phoenix, Crab and Dragon. Some were better than others. Recently, as in a couple of weeks ago, I discovered a second series of L5R novels: The Four Winds Saga. So these have been trickling in for a week or so now, the last one made it here today.

Next on the list, Lowell Francis on the Age of Ravens blog did Samurai week this week with a very helpful recommended reading list for running a Samurai RPG. Since I am obsessed with remaking AD&D's Oriental Adventures right AND I have a mostly female gaming group I decided to hop on over to Amazon and go with the Tomoe Gozen saga that was recommended, I ordered yesterday and the first of three came today. Sadly it's the second book, but I haven't finished reading "Lords of Grass and Thunder" yet anyway. Remarkably quick shipping though, I didn't pay for overnight delivery.

Lastly, these came in the mail yesterday, but I'd already posted my blog. Some more old school WEG D6 Star Wars stuff I bought on EBay with conversion to WotC D20 in mind.

It's getting late now, gotta go.  

D&D Next Playtest

I know I am a little behind the curve on this one, it's been a busy time for me. My dad has been in the hospital, I had a friend break her leg and she hasn't got anyone else to take her to her appointments, Ashli has had her appointments and even Ember had a dentist appointment stuck in there since I got the playtest packet. I had skimmed the first few pages before and wasn't really happy with what I saw.

Last night I finally got around to reading the entire "How to Play" and "DM Guidelines", as well as all the characters. Having read through most of the packet, I am now much more ambivalent about the entire project. I guess I am going to have to actually play the damned thing to get a feel for it before making a final decision, but my gut tells me that there are some things I am going to like and some things I am going to hate, and a couple of things I am just going to wonder what on earth they were thinking when they came up with that idea?

I suspect those are the 4th editionisms that people in the OSR blogosphere have mentioned, but 4th edition is a real blind spot for me, I took one skim through the 1st Player's Handbook (I have heard they have more than one) and said "Nope, this isn't for me". I had already abandoned WotC D&D with 3rd edition, first for Hackmaster, then I just went back to 1st edition AD&D, but 4th edition was a disappointment for me nonetheless because of the pre-release hype, and at least one playtester's report I read that said he was selling all his 3rd edition D&D stuff while it was still worth something, because 4th edition was JUST THAT AWESOME!

D&D Next, and I hope they change the title, doesn't seem to suck so hard as 4th edition did, and it was nice of them to put the "modular" old school section on the character sheet. They could still FUBAR this edition by adding in all the stupid races from 4th edition when all is said and done, to please their current customer base. I won't be pleased to see Dragonborn as a player race, not in a core book anyway, or any of the other odd races they added just so they could be different from every previous edition of D&D.

As I predicted, Race as Class is dead as a doornail, so we're getting a B/X meets AD&D 2nd edition vibe with a bunch of 3rd edition mechanics and terminology thrown in for good measure. So I guess what I'd like to see are four core classes, Cleric, Fighter, Thief, and Wizard (I know we're not going to go back to Magic-User), and four core races Human, Elf, Dwarf and Halfling (despite my personal dislike for Halflings, they are traditional for the game). Demi-Human level limits are probably gone the way of the Dodo too, so too I imagine are Class restrictions based on Race, so I imagine they'll end up with the 3rd edition style "Preferred Class" or whatever it was called.

I don't have a problem with the game evolving over time, it's evolving it into a tactical miniatures game, that, as DM, I am expected to lose every week that I really have a problem with. I also have a problem with having an actual rule for every possible situation, it steals from the power of the DM and just empowers rules lawyers. So far this seems like a step in the right direction (except for neutering the Cleric). The next time I actually get to game, I guess we'll see.

A Few Random Thoughts on a Thursday Afternoon

First- it's been too hot here to spend too much time in front of my computer blogging, one of the AC units is installed now, so it shouldn't be too bad for a little while longer, then we'll install the smaller, helper AC unit, but I imagine I'll still keep my computer in suspend mode for most of the day every day until the cool season approaches again. Partly out of energy consciousness, I like to be as green as possible and I hate paying too much to National Grid every month.

Second- I looked through the pictures of the stuff I have bought on Ebay recently, and if you just judged what I was planning for a game on that alone, I think you'd have to assume I was planning to set a Star Wars campaign up where all the PCs were stranded on a feudal Japanese type planet. Theoretically it could work, they both use the D20 system, and I have always mentioned whenever I picked up a WEG D6 module or supplement that it was for conversion to the WotC D20 Star Wars system. Nearly every purchase I have made, especially recently, for Legend of the Five Rings RPG has been for the dual statted 2nd edition/D20 Oriental Adventures edition. I think it could work.

Third- I grounded my son John from his 4th edition D&D game, indefinitely. I have several reasons for this, and both he and I and his mom know they are all good, valid reasons; but he's pretty pissed off about it anyway. His DM is a teacher and rescheduled the games for a school night too because he likes to go camping on the weekends, what was he thinking? He could have at least waited until school was out for the summer before making the change to Wednesday nights. To make up for it I offered to DM a game for him and his buddies on Friday nights, but he wasn't interested.

Fourth- Do you all think that Monte Cook left the D&D Next project because they wouldn't just let him do a rewrite/upgrade of 3.x D&D? That thought has been rattling around in my brain since he abruptly left the project. I haven't been keeping up with all the D&D Next stuff going on, although I have the playtest packet I haven't gotten around to more than skimming the first few pages of the "How to Play" booklet and I looked at the Cleric of Moradin character sheet

I got this in the mail today too.

Ironically, I think John would love playing a Ninja, but lately it's been difficult to get him to even play a game here at the house. He claims to hate the fact that his mom is always the de facto party leader and he never gets to show any initiative; sadly, usually when he attempts to "show initiative", what he's really doing is showboating and trying to play the game by himself. One example: the entire party had been captured by pirates, we used team work to get him out of the pit we were stuck in. Rather than lower a rope, so the rest of us could escape the pit while the pirates were distracted (torturing one of our party members), he decided to explore the entire pirate camp and then come back for us, and then without any weapons or anything useful; he had just scouted the area.

Mostly Just the Mail Call 22 MAY 2012

The Dark Side Sourcebook for the WotC D20 version of the Star Wars game came in the mail.

 The front of the book.

The back of the book. The pics are from the EBay auction.

I didn't play Star Wars this weekend, half my group RSVPed that they were sick, My daughter Ember got invited to a birthday party that took place right smack dab in the middle of game time and, frankly, I still feel under prepared to run any D20 based gaming. That and past experience has made me a little gun shy about running games in the Star Wars universe, I just can't shake the feeling that I am jinxed when it comes to Star Wars RPGs.

Still, I know the universe better than anyone else and this is a less rules intensive version of D20 then 3.x D&D was, so maybe it'll work out.

I haven't been neglecting this blog

I have been working on my other one, and spending a frustrating day waiting for a tree guy to actually show up at my house today. He called saying he was on his way over, and he's been here before like four times, just as I was about to leave for my Dawn Patrol game, so I did the responsible adult thing and canceled my Dawn Patrol game, so my wife wouldn't have to try and negotiate with this guy by herself.

He, of course, never showed up. I am really beginning to hate this guy. He treats logging my property like it's a tree removal service job, and it's not really. We have some valuable wood here, but he's always trying to treat it like we want some useless dead or damaged trees taken down and figuring out the cost to himself for equipment and crew. The Cherry trees alone are worth more than enough to finance the rest of the operation, a few years ago I'd have made a few thousand dollars on the deal and he'd have been happy to do it. The problem I have is that my lot is too small for big time loggers to waste time on and the small time guys are all the same, tree removal service guys.

I am supposed to run a D20 Star Wars game tomorrow and I was just going to convert the introductory adventure from the WEG D6 system to run. I have to say, I have had two weeks to prepare for this game and reading through the WotC Star Wars D20 revised has been absolute hell. I remember things from D20 D&D that I ultimately grew to hate and I am feeling under prepared, despite my extra week off due to Mona's birthday and Mother's Day.

I have actually found my attention wandering to both my Garnia campaign, hence the slight burst of activity on the other blog, and my Oriental Adventures project which has drawn my attention to both the Asian flavored potion of Garnia and all the fixes I still need to make and playtest for 1st edition AD&D's Oriental Adventures book, which I guess means that I'll have something "inspired by" that book, eventually. I also kind of want to play my B/X Vikings setting, but I am having a hard time coming up with a quorum of players, that whole drop-in, drop-out thing hasn't worked in practice; which is why we decided to go with Star Wars in the first place, more powerful PCs.

I also got this in the mail, two copies-

Lastly, bonus points if you can pick out which of these ancient Celt miniatures most resembles my fighting style in SCA battles. Click to embiggen.

Possibly an odd question to ask...

....especially on an old school gaming blog; but one of the things we were talking about at our latest Garnia brainstorming session, and have talked about in the past as well, was the possibility of making the campaign world system neutral and letting people "plug in" what ever system they are most comfortable with. Now I have D&D/AD&D and it's clones/simulacra pretty well in hand. We have a Fudge guy and a Savage Worlds guy, so what I am really looking for is a guy that can spread the audience a but more to the modern gamer- a Pathfinder guy. I guess a GURPS guy couldn't hurt either. Anyone interested in the project should comment either here or go check out my other blog and comment there.

Thanks!