White Star

It's been a long time since I did a "Mail Call" post here on the blog, not for any real reason other than I quit posting very often at all and just showing my cool new stuff seemed like filler. Today I am going to go ahead and have a different sort of mail call though. I got this-

in the mail today. I bought it on EBay last week. I know it's the beta rules, but I figured I'd check out the only official, licensed version of a Star Wars RPG I didn't already have.

Sadly, it came a day late, as, on Star Wars Day (May 4th) another Sci-Fi space opera game had been released into the wild- White Star

I hate to say that I'd jumped on a band-wagon, but this was a good band-wagon. Tenkar's Tavern proprietor +Erik Tenkar had been pimping this game pretty hard for about a day, and since it was being released on Star Wars day, and I am a big fan of D&D as a chassis for any genre, I bought it as soon as it was released. I was not disappointed. I read and then reread the rules. I have decided that this is my new favorite game, and I am, apparently, not alone. +James Spahn has written an excellent, completely Swords & Wizardry White Box compatible rules set and managed to both give us a setting we could use (and an adventure) while simultaneously encouraging us to use it all as a tool box to make it our own. I immediately stopped work on my other OSR projects and began making my own Star Wars and original Battlestar Galactica hacks for it, and I can see a few other licensed properties I could easily hack this for. I already wrote 2 new classes based on the settings I mentioned and have an adventure started. I haven't been this creative in years. This game is the muse I didn't know I needed until I had it. I have to thank Mr. Spahn for that.

So the official Star Wars game I have barely opened up to look at, it loses to White Star. Now go buy it here.

Recently...

I discovered that, with the purchase of the "Otosan Uchi" boxed set, I had nearly everything printed for the first, second and third editions of the "Legend of the Five Rings" RPG. Everything except the "Tomb of Iuchiban". Imagine my surprise when I went looking for that particular item and saw the prices that it fetches. I am not a collector, I play my games, but when I see a $120.00+ price tag on what has been called "the Tomb of Horrors for L5R", I get a little annoyed. What, did they only print like 50 copies? I'll stop ranting now.

Last weekend I played "Barbarians of Lemuria" and it was pretty cool, met some cool new people and they seem like my kind of playing group, a little laid back, the GM made rulings instead of looking stuff up in the book every 5 minutes. I even had a beer there. Plans have been laid out to make this their summer game and I intend to keep playing. It was fun, my only comment was that we could have played the exact same adventure with D&D or a retro-clone (my current favorite being S&W).

Now I see it's June and I have an obligation to run my contest, the sole prize for this is a box of Warlord Games 28mm scale American Infantry for their Bolt Action line. I haven't played Bolt Action yet, but I did order the rules recently, because I like skirmish scale WW2 stuff. Warlord games sponsored this contest, and usually I like to pick a best adventure, with my judges, to decide who get's the prizes; but I haven't been all that bloggy lately, didn't come up with a working set of OSR style rules for WW2 (yet), so I will choose the victor at random from the comments section.My original idea had been to run an OSR D-Day/Battle for Normandy adventure contest.

For those of you still waiting on prizes from my last Roman themed contest, my wife is busy with other art commitments, but assures me that your portraits are next on her list, in the meantime I am going to just mail the dice to the winners, sorry about the delay.

Contest Update

I don't know why I didn't think of this before, but I am going to add Roman Numeral dice to the top three winners. What gamer doesn't love dice? I also have a play report I am behind on, I DMed a party through a Roman themed adventure where all of the characters were members of the Praetorian Guard, but a secret elite unit that hunted supernatural threats to the empire. For fun I set it during the last year of the reign of Caligula. One of the players dubbed the game setting "Ancient Roman Ghost Busters", I can live with that, although I had both Cthulu Invictus and The Walking Dead in mind when I wrote the first adventure.

Anyway, happy holidays to all of you, whatever holidays you celebrate or just a day off from work, if that's your thing. My Saturnalia/Yule/Christmas has been exceptional this year- here are a sampling of the kick-ass miniatures and the game to go with them that I have gotten so far-

I have to say, I was skeptical of hard plastic miniatures, but Warlord has won me over and the rulebook is a work of art.

 

 The Fanatics groups are both metal miniature sets, and Warlord's metals have always been high quality. I look forward to a marathon painting session over the Christmas break session with the kids and my wife.

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.

Three Play Reports Behind and Then Some

I have been busy playing some RPGs with Big Darryl, Darryl Jr., Dalton and a couple of times with Big Darryl's wife Joann.

I'll start at the beginning - We played the second session of 43 AD, and we fought those battles and it didn't go well due to some extraordinarily bad luck on the part of the players rolling dice for the Romans. We also had to retcon a couple of things from the earlier session because we'd missed a couple of minor points in the rules in the first session. David wasn't there, so we all kind of missed him, but we knew it was kind of a long shot getting the kid back to game regularly anyway, he lives like 50+ miles away from his grandparents, and summer's almost over. Big Darryl was really not pleased with the character he had rolled and was starting to really show it in a big way after the Romans started losing battles big against the Germans, he actually wanted his character to desert at one point and had to be talked out of it, which was good because he ended up rallying the survivors in the end. The session was a meat grinder for the Romans though and we really stress tested the rules, we're putting the campaign on hold until after the designer gets back from vacationing in Australia so we can discuss a few points with him.

So, to keep the roleplaying going on, I dug out my Legend of the Five Rings 1st edition stuff and had everyone make characters for that. I figured it was a longshot for campaign play, but Dalton was into L5R and so was I. Darryl Jr. was always cool with AD&D OA back in the day, although he hates D&D now (3e killed the love), so I figured a fantasy samurai setting that wasn't D&D would be cool. Big Darryl might be a hard sell, since he's 70 years old and not really into Asian fantasy. I had that stuff with me because I anticipated ending early and I thought we might want to try out another game, and I wanted to push it on my group truth be told, since I had bought all the stuff for it, and continue to buy stuff for it. I bought an L5R Disk Wars starter on EBay because I'd never seen one before and it was super cheap, but I digress. We actually didn't finish character generation that evening, as it turns out, even when you have two (semi-)experienced players who are (quasi-) familiar with character generation, teaching it to others is still time consuming. So I gave each of them a book to keep and went home for the better part of a week.

My prediction about who would welcome the game turned out to be dead wrong. Big Darryl loved the setting, although his grasp of the rules is still a little shaky; and Darryl Jr. hated the bulky rulebook with it's immensity of stuff to read. Big Darryl liked it so much he talked his wife Joann into playing, and she hasn't played an RPG since the 1980s. So we ended up with Joann playing a Crane Bushi, Big Darryl playing a Unicorn Bushi, Darryl Jr. playing a Unicorn Bushi (he hadn't read a lot of the setting stuff and decided based on the fact that they are about 1/2 Mongol 1/2 Japanese, he figured he could roleplay that - he is a former Khakhan of the Steppe Warriors after all and a veteran OA player) and Dalton playing a Crab Shugenja. The father and son Unicorns are actually playing cousins.

I started them out with the adventure in the back of the book - "Ceremony of the Samurai" where they compete in the Topaz Championship. Dalton had played through the first day of this before with my family, but since the game didn't apparently stick with them, I decided it was OK for him to play it again. He's a good enough roleplayer to not ruin the surprises he knows about for the other players and not act on player knowledge; and he did just that. Roughly 3/4s of the way through the first day of the tournament I got a phone call from my wife that my sister was in the hospital and things were looking pretty dire, this was almost two weeks ago now and she's still in the hospital and things are still looking pretty dire. She's 300 miles away though and my parents went down to see her, there's nothing anyone can do at this point except hope, and pray if you are a person of faith. Still, her condition weighs heavily on my mind, and it's the main reason I've not blogged much for the last couple of weeks.

Anyway, that call kind of threw me off my game, but I got us through to the end of the first day. Since I need to keep myself occupied I've kept on playing games, although I haven't really been on my game all that much. I've missed stuff in the adventure and skipped some stuff, done some stuff just flat out wrong. I can't decide if it's because I am still really new with this system or I am too distracted to think straight. Anyway, last time Darryl Jr.'s son Dylan joined us and played one of the NPCs, Hida Fujizaka; so we had three generations of gamers at the table while I GMed. I wish the game had gone better, but maybe next time. I only have to finish up with day three and then Darryl Jr. has volunteered to take the reigns as GM to give me a break, since he "had to learn all the damned rules anyway"; and I'll actually get to play. I think I am going to be a Lion Bushi or maybe a Crab, although if Dylan sticks to the group I don't want to steal his thunder.

Here's some more stuff I got in the mail -

I needed this, I gave away three copies

Several of these were doubles for me, some were not. They were extremely cheap as a lot though $40.00 for the bunch, that was the minimum bid. I was a little surprised to win.

I'll be gaming today...

So I thought I'd share some stuff I got in the mail this week and never got around to showing you all-

I never bought this back in the day because I had the first edition version and it worked fine, but this was a good deal.

This is one of damned few female Mongol miniatures out there.

Still shrink-wrapped Clan War Oni. 

And the miniatures with the worst packing job I have ever seen, they were in a box, in a zip-lock bag with a few styrofoam packing peanuts surrounding the bag. These are the EBay pictures, one of the spearmen is pictured with a broken spear shaft. When they arrived here four were broken and all of them were bent badly.

I got something else too, but it has to wait until I get pictures of it to show you, so there's a cool surprise coming up! If you all ask nicely in the comments maybe my lovely wife Mona will dig out the digital camera and take the pictures while I am gone today.

43 AD

It looks like we'll finally start the 43 AD campaign this coming Thursday. I still haven't been able to find any fumble rule in the 1st edition Legend of the Five Rings RPG book and I've spent hours searching and rereading through that book. My mom made me another birthday dinner today, so that was nice; I apparently get to stretch my birthday out into a grand multi-day celebration. Mostly though, I am posting today to show you what I got in the mail-

Age of Heroes puts me a little closer to my goal of owning the complete set of Historical Reference Series books. Now I only need the Crusades and A Mighty Fortress.

These L5R CCG cards were an impulse buy, but they do mark the first time I have ever intentionally bought the cards for the game by themselves, instead of having them come with some other RPG product or be mislabeled as Clan War cards. I bought them to go with my "War of Honor" game, because I realized that the game uses the same cards as the L5R CCG.

A Wee Update for Today

I spent most of my day at doctors appointments for myself and Ashli, so not a whole lot got done here today. I got some cool stuff in the mail though.

This Crab Army Expansion, for instance, is pristine; the shrink wrap was taken off but the miniatures are still in their protective plastic wrapper, and the seller included an extra copy of the rulebook, which is nice.

Same seller, I already had one of these, but I figured if I got it on the minimum bid and saved on shipping it'd be worth it. I did and it is. Also in pristine condition, better than my other one.

These guys I am actually a little worried might be beyond my ability to put together. My hands are huge and manual dexterity is not one of my great strengths, great strength is. Fortunately, my lovely wife Mona has volunteered to do the job for me, although if it goes like her volunteering to paint my miniatures this may take a while.

I also got this from Amazon, I may be over-preparing for my 43 AD/Warband dual campaign. My busy appointment schedule this week means I'll have plenty of reading time while I am in waiting rooms though, so I guess that's a plus...

It's a good thing my Mail Carrier has a car.

To be fair, growing up in the country mail carriers always did, but for the years I lived in the city they had a car, but walked the block delivering the mail anyway, and I am pretty sure I'd have been left off the route today. Here's why-

OK, Greyhawk Adventures is post Gygax TSR, but it is still 1st edition and I didn't have a copy. I have read it before, back in the day, my buddy Darryl's dad used to buy him all the new books for birthdays and Christmas and stuff. My parents got religion though and cut me off, so I had to buy my own stuff, TSR quality dropped after Oriental Adventures (some might say before), so I spent my allowance money on stuff I could use; like Dragon Magazine and miniatures and new games.

I actually already owned a copy of this 2nd edition AD&D Celts book, but it was given to my by a friend who had bought it used and the douche-bag he bought it from kept the map and cut the monster section out of the book. Now I have a pristine copy, and I'll be passing this copy on to my buddy Darryl, who might use it as a resource for the Warband 1/2 of our dual 43 AD/Warband campaign.

OK, I know I swore off Legend of the Five Rings RPG stuff because no one else wants to play, but I already have the 2nd module in this series.

And these 2 books were $4.99 each.

These 2 came wrapped in a glittery cotton or polyester protective coat. I got the 1st edition book for Dalton, since I already have 3 and he was interested in the game maybe for his own group.

And this is a board/card game, so I can play it with my friends and family; it's only tangentially related to the RPG I want them to play with me. Plus, at 59.99 on the website, it's probably the most expensive game I own, via the MSRP. I got it for less than 1/2 that with free shipping!

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.

Romans & Britons

For days, Romans and their invasion of Britannia have been foremost on my mind. I had, more or less, skimmed through the 43 AD rulebook when I bought it, as well as it's Warband supplement; but for the last few days I've been giving them a thorough read through; and, because of my somewhat perfectionist/obsessive personality, I've also been watching documentaries about the Romans in Britain, the Celts and some movies about the Romans and the Britons fighting it out. I have been prepping for this new campaign like a champ. I've even ordered new books from Amazon, some of which have begun to arrive, just to immerse myself in both the Roman and Celtic worlds. Here are a few that have already made it here, I've only just begun to read them.

"Art of the Celts" actually just arrived today. I may just be using this as an excuse to buy more books though, because it's not as though I don't already have significant library sections on both peoples; as in, they each have their own shelves. I took a course on ancient Rome in college, ancient Greece too, but I liked Rome better. I kept all the text books and bought all the recommended books for that course. The Celts I started studying on my own, just because of their connection to my own Scottish Highland heritage, but I am pretty sure I am at least as knowledgeable about the Celts as I am about the Romans. The Scottish Highlanders descended from the Gaelic branch of the Celtic tree too, but that's beside the point.

So today's mail was almost a system shock, it yanked me away from 43 AD and back to both the OSR and my Oriental Adventures project. Aside from the aforementioned "Art of the Celts", I got Tim Shorts' "The Manor" Issue #2, I read the 'Introduction' and 'Hugo's Healing Potions' all the way through, so far so good; but what really impressed me was the had written note on the envelope it came in. That's the sort of touch that makes you feel like you are really a member of a community instead of just someone typing words out into nothingness. Thanks for that.

I also got these miniatures from EBay. They are old Clan War miniatures, which I started collecting for my Oriental Adventures games, now I also hope one day to actually play some Clan War and some 1st or 2nd edition Legend of the Five Rings RPG, for which, of course, the miniatures are also eminently suited.

I got them at such a bargain, I thought there must be something I was missing in the sale, but, aside from the blister pack plastic being a little smushed in on the Crimson Legion, the miniatures are in fine shape. The Oni no Hida Yakamo was still shrink-wrapped and looks as fresh as the day it was manufactured. Then there was this 3e era module that I had never heard of-

Interestingly, it says it requires the use of the 3e D&D Player's Handbook, but makes no mention of the 3e Oriental Adventures book. It was printed in 2002 and 3e OA came out in 2001, so I don't really get what's going on there, given the obviously pseudo-Chinese setting of this module.