A Slight Break in my OSR Blogging Hiatus

To bring you this dice related announcement-

I spotted these bad boys on Amazon and impulse ordered them, so I thought I'd share. They are slightly larger than standard D6s and I like that. My only real regrets are that I only thought to get two and I didn't shop around; they might have been cheaper on EBay.

They make Roman Numeral D10s and D12s too, so I may grab some of them. I may have a Roman themed D&D game coming up soon and I am all about the props and setting. I usually even theme the food to the setting.

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.

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.  

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.

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.

OK, So...

Blogger kind of screwed me over today, I won't have a tantrum and leave for Wordpress or anything, I'll just deal with it. Some of the new features are actually kind of improvements, I just wish they hadn't changed the interface to add them. I can't see any real reason why they had to. I also got this in the mail-

I bid on it before the new year and won it on the 1st, so it doesn't count against me and my resolution.

Mail Call 28 JUN 2011

Once again the picture is from the EBay auction.



Honestly, I don't even know if I already have a copy of this. I saw an absurdly low minimum bid with low shipping and figured I'd give it a shot. I won. I am pretty sure I don't already own it, but I have scored a lot of d6 Star Wars stuff cheap over the last few months.

Also, I know I promised my take on shield walls for today, but I had to take advantage of the good weather today and get some outdoor work done. Soon, when I get the time to sit and think on it. I haven't forgotten my B/X WW2 project either, more is forthcoming on that front too.

Mail Call 08 JUN 2011

Once again I am a sucker for a great EBay deal. This book is in pretty rough shape, but I got it for less than $4.00 with shipping, so I can't complain. I don't really have any of the 2nd edition WEG D6 Star Wars stuff, but for the price I figured I could give it a look. Being sick at least is giving me a chance to look through all of these bargain gaming materials I have been collecting over the last few months.

Mail Call 08 JUN 2011

Once again I am a sucker for a great EBay deal. This book is in pretty rough shape, but I got it for less than $4.00 with shipping, so I can't complain. I don't really have any of the 2nd edition WEG D6 Star Wars stuff, but for the price I figured I could give it a look. Being sick at least is giving me a chance to look through all of these bargain gaming materials I have been collecting over the last few months.

B/X Star Wars?

Pictured- Anakin Skywalker and his Padawan Ahsoka Tano

I was idly wasting some time today waiting for my minivan to finish being fixed and I picked up and read the newest Star Wars Insider; which I pick up when I see it sitting there on the shelf, but don't otherwise go seeking out*. I thought to myself, I have the D20 Saga edition of the game and the D6 West End version, but has anyone ever done a B/X conversion? B/X is certainly easier than D20 and has the advantage of NOT being a completely new system for my D&D group, who pretty much hate having to learn new rules systems. Since I am once again in love with B/X (with some AD&D added) I'd like to know if there is an available conversion or if my own gamer ADD will force me to start yet another project that will most likely bog down on some minor point and never see completion. My advisor at university called this "a tendency towards perfectionism", which I always thought was maybe the nicest way of saying it.

Anyway, my kids and I have been enjoying the Clone Wars animated series and I got a pretty good idea for a mini-campaign that takes place there.

*My wife will call me out on this one as a liar, I will admit that when we go to THAT grocery store where they carry it, I ALWAYS check the magazine rack; other than that I don't go looking for it.