January 1st 2013 or 2766 A.U.C.

Happy New Year to everyone and I hope that you are all hard at work on you adventures for my contest because I ordered the Roman Numeral dice today for the winners, D4s, D6s and D10s. I'll post some pictures when they arrive.

I also want to pimp the Up FrontKickstarter again, it's got less than a full day left, but it's already fully funded and met every stretch goal, so the 125.00 sweet spot gets you a hell of a lot of game. If you like World War 2 games or card games it's worth every penny.

Now this is going to be short, but I feel like I should mention it, my Aunt June passed away today. She was my mother's older sister and my last surviving blood relative that was a veteran of WW II. My mom came from a huge family, there were 14 kids and she was 3^rd from the last, so I have a lot of relatives on her side of the family, but my Aunt June was special and I will miss her.

Now, I am two play reports behind, and, to be honest, I don't know whether or not I'll ever get them done; anything more than a really brief synopsis anyway. The Roman themed game and the traditional December Oriental Adventures game. The Roman game had a bit of a dungeon crawl in it, which reminded me that I wanted to mention that I had really quit doing dungeons for the most part before the OSR came along. Now I have my Viking Mega-Dungeon, the ruined Temple of Apollo just off the Via Salaria and my OA game with it's overland travel and court politics is out of the norm.

Just an observation.

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.

A Gift for Gamers Everywhere!

You'll have to head on over here to get it. I had nothing to do with it's creation, I am just trying to spread the cheer from the OSR to the rest of the world.

Also, since everyone is sharing their Christmas memories, it occurs to me that it was 30 Christmases before the one we just had when I got my AD&D 1st edition Players Handbook and Dungeon Masters Guide. The DMG was from my dad and the PH was from my little brother, who was 3 weeks shy of his 3rd birthday. I had already bought for myself the Holmes Basic boxed set and the AD&D Monster Manual. I still have those AD&D books.

Happy Birthday USA

I just wanted to say Happy 4th of July to all of my fellow Americans; other than that I have a pretty busy schedule today of all the patriotic Independence Day stuff that we citizens of the USA do to celebrate throwing off the shackles of the British Empire, I'll be over-eating with friends and family. There will probably be illegal fireworks at some point.

Happy Canada Day!

I figured I'd get that in for my neighbors to the nearby north before they were completely overshadowed by our own 4th of July celebrations. I almost skipped it because I have been holding a grudge against Canada for quite some time since they are the only country in the world that has ever denied me entry, but I can't stay mad forever; besides I have Canadian roots quite recently on both sides of my family. My mother's entire family is French-Canadian and my Father's Father's side of the family is of Scottish Highlander extraction but spent a couple of generations in Canada before they came across the lake.

So, despite our differences, I am officially making up with Canada today. I am also going to remember all the things I love about Canada. CKWS out of Kingston, Ontario gave me Star Trek every day after school from the time I was in kindergarten until I graduated, hell, it might still be on at 4:00PM; I don't know. They also ran Space:1999 right after Star Trek for a number of years. CKWS continued to expose me to both British and Canadian TV that most Americans would never see, making me slightly more culturally aware of the outside world than most Americans. Molson. Labatt. OV Splits. Being close enough that I could feel more like a seasoned traveler for having been to a "foreign" country, unlike most Americans that weren't born to wealthy families.

Happy Father's Day

Wishing a very happy father's day to all the dads out there.

My wife and kids made me a nice breakfast of pancakes, scrambled eggs and bacon; then I went to visit my dad and give him a card with a train on it (he is an avid model railroader), soon my wife and eldest daughter will have prepared the central NY standard summer feast consisting of Hamburgers (ordinarily this would also include Hoffman's Hotdogs, but we didn't get any this time), Salt Potatoes, Grandma Brown's Baked Beans and Tossed Salad*; and we will settle in to watching season one of Hogans Heroes and, perhaps, season one of Stargate SG-1.

On a personal note, my illness seems to be mostly gone now with just a few lingering, annoying effects so I will be resuming my regular blogging probably tomorrow.

*Potato Salad, Macaroni Salad, Coleslaw, Corn on the Cob, and Steamed Clams are also common for the CNY summer feast, but it's too early for Corn or Clams and with Salt Potatoes we usually opt out of the Potato and Macaroni Salads except in cases of large gatherings; I think we just overlooked the Coleslaw. Everyone loves Mona's Coleslaw.