Name Your Poison

I am currently running a Roman themed AD&D (1^st edition, heavy on the house rules) game on Roll20. I am giving serious thought to also running an OD&D (or Swords & Wizardry Whitebox) game there too. I am thinking of giving it a Norman/Crusader theme, kind of roll out with extra medievalisms, like jousting, maybe eliminate non-human characters so everything “other” is special and supernatural. Write up a bit of a culture packet, like I did with the Romans and see how that goes. I don't even know if I'll add Thieves.

The real kicker is that I think I might do it as a megadungeon campaign. My Roman themed “Lost Atlantis” campaign was decided, by player vote, to be a hex crawl and I'd kind of like to run some dungeon delving too.

I think I'd like to run jousting tournaments and stuff too. Maybe I'll have players make their characters like in Mike Davison's Flailsnails Jousting Tourney book.

I guess the point here is that I have a lot of time on my hands these days, since Mona died, and I'd like to fill it with some gaming. Pick either game, or both.

Find me on Facebook here - https://www.facebook.com/wdowie

Look to my gaming Discord server here - https://discord.gg/jYCvjPY

And on Roll20 here - https://app.roll20.net/join/2998862/sQwuRg

Keep in mind that I am a "theater of the mind" guy, so I rarely use minis in person on a real tabletop, I have yet to even try on Roll20.

Lost Atlantis

So I started a new (heavily house ruled) AD&D campaign, a mini-setting, part of my larger "Garnia" campaign setting. I call it lost Atlantis. I am running it as a "cloud" or"West Marches" style game. I asked all my friends (and family that play D&D) what kind of a game they wanted and they picked Exploration over Mega-Dungeon, so that's the focus.

Originally it was supposed to be an in person, local game, but it's like herding cats to get everyone's schedules to mesh, then we had bad weather cancel our only two scheduled games, so I opened it up to the possibility of online play via Roll20 and Discord, that gave me some more possible players, people I used to play with that had moved out of area and such.

I found a couple of other guys that are local through a gaming meet up.

We played a few times and I felt a little more confident. I don't use minis most of the time at home, so much of Roll20 is wasted on me, but it does make for a good dice roller and a repository for character sheets and the various documents I have written for the setting, which is, basically, the Roman empire discovers a new continent, where there never was one before. It's got a bunch of other accretions from my roughly 35 years of DMing in this world, but that's close enough to start.

I mention this now, because I am probably going to keep sharing stuff like my "Schrodinger's Adventurer" rule, which is now a house rule in the game, and also in case anyone want to check it out. We're playing tonight at 7:00PM. I'll be there sometime before 7:00PM (eastern US) to assist with rolling characters.

Here's the Discord link for voice- https://discord.gg/jYCvjPY

Here's the Roll20 link for the rest - https://app.roll20.net/join/2998862/sQwuRg

There is also a Facebook group for the game, which is used for scheduling (until I figure out a better way), as a secondary repository of campaign documents, and for talking about the game. Find it here - https://www.facebook.com/groups/260202304516526/


I still kind of consider my online game to be a beta, so I am slowly rolling it out for public consumption, but loyal blog readers should get the beta pass.

New Campaign Idea

Here is my latest idea for a new D&D or AD&D campaign.

This campaign that Starts in England in 1066. I know what you are thinking here- another military style campaign with a different historical period. That is only half true, my 1066 campaign would be set during the conquest period, but not really be a part of it. Just straight D&D adventures, with dungeons and all the other stuff (within the context of the setting); my thought is that the PCs are NOT members of either the defeated Anglo-Saxon or Norman armies, but rather the type of rogues and scoundrel that follow any military undertaking, opportunists taking advantage of the chaos generated by the multiple invasions of 1066. Maybe your character is a Norwegian that got stranded in England, for whatever reason, or maybe he's a Lithuanian trader with a taste for high risk, high reward opportunities



William the Conqueror's England was not really all that stable, pretty much for the rest of his life. In 1066 England was invaded by two major north/west European powers, major battles were fought in the north and south of England. Additionally, the Scots, Welsh and Irish made major raids into England that year. The Anglo-Saxon nobility had fled to the Scottish court looking for help, Edward the Aetheling was the last surviving real heir to the English throne; his sister Margaret would eventually marry Malcolm Canmore, the Scottish king, thus cementing a weak claim to the English kingdom for the Scots. Edward would go on to join the Byzantine Emperor's elite Varangian guard, like so many other defeated English lords and warriors, which changed the ethnic make up of the Varangians to mostly English from nearly totally Scandinavian within a generation. Anyway, it was a really chaotic period of time to be in England for more than two decades.



Now you are thinking “But there are no monsters in England!”, au contraire mes amis, England has a rich tableaux of mythology, tradition and history to draw upon, from the ancient Celtic Britons to the Romans that conquered them to Arthurian myth and legend surrounding the post-Roman period in Britain and the Nordic type religion of the old Anglo-Saxons, as well as the actually Nordic mythology of the Norsemen themselves who invaded and settled England in the preceding centuries. All kinds of Christian stuff can be thrown in there too, check out some of the stories about English saints.



Add to that flavorful mix of northwestern European myth and legend the fact that this is a D&D campaign world we're designing, and you can throw in pretty much anything from the Monster Manual if you want. Humanoids? My take on this is that they are just men that have been tainted by the chaos and evil of the Norman Conquest period. Petty, tricky men might become Kobolds; brawny, bullying scavengers might be twisted into Gnolls. Dragons are all over the British isles in myth, St. George the Dragonslayer is the Patron Saint of England (although not yet, he has to wait until the 14^th century). Dungeons can be Roman ruins, or ancient Celtic sites, or simply a manifestation of the world reacting to the conquest itself. Then mix in the undead, plenty of reason for the unquiet dead to be poking their restless spirits around Conquest period England.



Plus, all of this stuff falls directly into the middle of my college major, History with an emphasis on the medieval period and my minor, Medieval Studies; so I think I can pull off the atmosphere of this campaign pretty well. Big Darryl always says that I majored in D&D at college and I don't think he's really wrong.



I might ditch some of the more anachronistic stuff, like plate mail, but maybe not, I can see an argument either way on that.

 See- They are wearing plate in this medieval depiction of the battle of Hastings :)

But not in this one :(



Lack of local players may necessitate  going a non-standard route to run this campaign, like PBEM or even Google+, despite my Luddite ways; anyone who is interested in going one of these routes should probably comment here with their preference or email me here. 

Even if you aren't interested in playing,I'd still like to see any commentary that might help me improve the experience for my prospective player, thanks!

Minor edit: I also wanted to mention that no one won the Celtic Halloween contest, because there were no entries. I noticed that as soon as I hit publish.

What I have been doing lately...

Since last year, I've picked up a ton of OSR stuff in print- ranging from Expeditious Retreat Press' "Malevolent and Benign" to Lamentations of the Flame Princess' "Player Core Book: Rules and Magic", I also bought a whole lot of miniatures, mostly WWII and Ancient Romans and Gauls/Britons, for use with my B/X WWII game (still in early development) and 43 AD respectively. I also did something I expressly stated I wouldn't do, I bought the new Players Handbook (and the starter set, but even at 1/2 price I think it was a waste of money).  Oh, and I completed my 3rd edition Legend of the Five Rings RPG collection, and started on the 4th edition with the core rulebook.

Now, the new D&D surprised me, after Gen Con everyone was all raving about it, so curiosity got the better of me and I order it on Amazon, I haven't had a chance to look at really yet, because my lovely wife Mona has been reading through it.  Oh, and I also bought a ton of Pendragon stuff, from 1st edition through 5.1, I kind of felt like I had to when I found "The Great Pendragon Campaign" for a mere $60.00US in a game store in Germany, 1st (only?) printing, mint condition. I actually want to run some Pendragon now, but I haven't figured out how to go about it. I am considering PBEM because my gaming group has grown up and gone to college and moved out of the house. I only have my youngest, Ember, left here now and she'll be gone in a couple of years.

I suppose I should have seen it coming, this isn't the first time I've lost pretty much my whole gaming group because they grew up and moved away. The last time it was my brother Jon's friends, he's nine and a half years younger than me, so I was in my mid-to-late twenties when I ran AD&D (2nd edition, they were oddly reticent to play 1st edition) for those lads. Eventually I switched to 3rd edition, but they were mostly gone by then. I ran Hackmaster (4th edition)  for a while after I gave up on D&D, really it's the first retroclone though, right? Anyway, my oldest two children have moved on, although John is forced out of the dorm for holidays and between semesters, so I see him then. Ashli calls a couple of times a week usually.

 In theory I am still working on a super-hero genre RPG based on Joshua Guess' book Next (and it's impending sequels), but I haven't really been doing much of anything but playing "Civilization 5", "Mount and Blade" and the "Panzer General" clone "Panzer Corps", and by playing Civ5, I really mean working on a mod. "Mount and Blade" is great, because it's a sandbox RPG, but I became mightily peeved with it on Sunday when my saved game corrupted, why didn't I think to do alternating save slots? I tried starting over, but that kind of blows. I am accustomed now to being the most powerful lord in my Kingdom, who single-handedly  brought the other four Kingdoms (OK, one is a Khanate) of Calradia to their knees, commanding armies of 4-500 elite troops. I was an axe-wielding god of death, now bandits can beat my ass and take me prisoner.

"Panzer Corps" continues to please though, it has all of the good turn based strategy of "Panzer General"- even the maps look the same and the controls are identical, but the scenarios in the Grand Campaign are different enough from PG to be fresh and challenging.

Anyway, it's late here and I am rambling, so I'll just mention that I also got a couple of different flavors of "Swords and Wizardry" and bought everything available for the "Basic Fantasy" RPG. I am going to sign off for tonight and I'll try to start posting more again. Before I was blogging about gaming almost every day, but when you take year off the habit gets broken, now I have to reinstate it.

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.

Roman Contest Prizes Awarded-

Grand Prize-

PDF copies of 43 AD and it's supplement Warband, courtesy of Zozer Games.

8”x10” Canvas Print courtesy of easycanvasprints.com

Print copy of William Morris's House of the Wolfings

Print copy of LC1 Assault Against the Menace on the Mountain

PDF of LC1 Assault Against the Menace on the Mountain

Roman Numeral D4(x2), D6(x2) and D10(x2).

One commissioned Character portrait courtesy of Mona Dowie.

Goes to Ned Leffingwell for “Mayhem at the Manor”

Second Prize-

PDF copy of 43 AD courtesy of Zozer Games.

PDF of LC1 Assault Against the Menace on the Mountain

Roman Numeral D4, D6(x2) and D10.

One commissioned Character portrait courtesy of Mona Dowie.

One Old School 1984 Ral Partha Roman Legionary lead miniature, unpainted.

Goes to David Jaske for “Road to Antioch”

Third Prize-

PDF copy of 43 AD courtesy of Zozer Games.

PDF of LC1 Assault Against the Menace on the Mountain

Roman Numeral D4, D6(x2) and D10.

One commissioned Character portrait courtesy of Mona Dowie.

Goes to Ian MacDougal for “The Crooked Baths”

May the laurels of victory be placed upon the brows of the victors!

Roman Contest Over

I declare my latest themed contest officially at an end. I probably should have done that yesterday, but it was a snow day and the kids were home. The relatively small number of entries should make judging easy and fast, so I'd expect to see an announcement before the weekend as to who has won what. Thanks to everyone that entered, refrigerator magnets will most likely be going out in the mail the same time as the prizes; most likely Saturday.

So I've Been Sick

For most of January I've been sick and not promoting my contest at all, or blogging to speak of. I just came on today to thank everyone who did submit an entry for the contest and remind everyone that there is still a little over a day left to get an entry in.

I also wanted to get a public shout out and HAPPY BIRTHDAY to my son John who turned 18 today.

So, I haven't been at my computer a whole lot, other than WotC opening the vaults on D&D Classics and me missing my own Blog's Anniversary; did I miss anything important?

I have mostly been doing a lot of reading and laying in bed this month and it looks like it may go on that way for a while longer, so I will not be running a February contest. I have already planned a Celtic themed contest for March though, running from the 1st through the 31st. Warlord Games is already signed on to sponsor that one, so I figure I have to run it.

Contest?

So I am running a contest here, and maybe I should be promoting it a little more, but I have to say I am a little disappointed at the response so far. The Viking themed contest was so successful I thought that themed contests were sure to be a hit, but maybe I was wrong. My Mongol contest was a bust, I only got one entry. I suppose I should have just declared him the winner of all three top prizes, but I figured nobody wants to win by default. Mongols were somewhat specialized though, so I thought Ancient Rome would be a good theme, easily as popular as Vikings, if I can believe film and literature.

But now the contest is half over and I still haven't received any entries, which is probably a bad sign; and nobody sending me a progress report, which is a worse sign.

So I have to wonder, is it the themed nature of the contest, or did I make the rules too open? Do people just not respond to the Ancient Roman theme? Something else entirely?

Will I be inundated with contest entries as the deadline approaches? I am curious, I generally receive a lot more feedback than I am getting now, and this contest has been advertised to a much wider audience, so I would have expected more rather than less.

Anyway, there are a bunch of cool prizes at stake.

Comment if you have an opinion about my contests, whether it's the theme, the way I run them, whatever; I can handle constructive criticism.

Maybe next time I'll put up a poll to vote on a theme.

Roman Dice...

...are here.

Click to embiggen.

Now we're just waiting for some contest submissions so I can give 'em away!

Ave Caesar! A Contest Update

I just want to reiterate all of the contest rules and prizes here and announce that I am extending the submissions deadline until the end of January rather than the Ides, because, while the Ides sounded cool, don't think it gave enough time with the holidays in the way.

So here we go-

The contest is to write an Ancient Roman Empire themed adventure for early edition D&D, AD&D or one of their popular retroclones. One Page Dungeons are fine, but I have had people need more space, so short adventures are acceptable too. I am willing to accept anything you are willing to submit, up to and including huge hex-crawls; every adventure will be judged on it's own merit.

The fine print- I intend to publish these submissions to the web as a free series for the OSR community, if you want to opt out of having me give your work away to everyone, mention it in your submission email.

All adventures should be submitted via email to me at williamjdowie AT gmail DOT com by midnight on January 31^st EST. I will then email them to the rest of the judges.

The good stuff-

Everyone who submits an entry, or really, really wants one gets a refrigerator magnet. So far the magnets have made it to Europe and Australia, as well as all over the USA, let's see how many continents and countries we can hit while the supply lasts! Just send me your postal address with your submission and my wife will mail it out within a few days, unless you live in Maryland or Germany, in which case I will have to nag her for weeks.

Grand Prize-

PDF copies of 43 AD and it's supplement Warband, courtesy of Zozer Games.

8”x10” Canvas Print courtesy of easycanvasprints.com

Roman Numeral D4(x2), D6(x2) and D10(x2).

One commissioned Character portrait courtesy of Mona Dowie.

Second Prize-

PDF copy of 43 AD courtesy of Zozer Games.

Roman Numeral D4, D6(x2) and D10.

One commissioned Character portrait courtesy of Mona Dowie.

One Old School 1984 Ral Partha Roman Legionary lead miniature, unpainted.

Third Prize-

PDF copy of 43 AD courtesy of Zozer Games.

Roman Numeral D4, D6(x2) and D10.

One commissioned Character portrait courtesy of Mona Dowie.

Prizes may be updated, as I am constantly on the lookout for more sponsors and I am not averse to opening my own vault of gaming goods if I think we need more submissions.

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.

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.

New Contest Sponsor

Paul Elliot of Zozer Games has kindly offered to sponsor the contest, since the top prizes are copies of his game and, as a bonus he's going to throw in a pdf copy of the Warband supplement to 43 AD to the 1st place winner. 43 AD was nominated for best roleplaying game of 2012 at this year's UK Games Expo.

So, now I am scurrying to find some more prizes with a Roman theme to go with this, but, thus far, the contest prizes are-

1st place pdfs of 43 AD and Warband, an 8"x10" canvas print and a custom character portrait.
2nd and 3rd are the pdf of 43 AD and the custom character portrait.

I'll work on differentiating 2nd and 3rd places a bit, I still have some sponsorship irons in the fire and I'd like to see how they pan out before I commit anything from my collection to the prize haul.

EDIT- just to be helpful Richard LeBlanc of the Save Vs Dragon blog and New Big Dragon Games has already posted something to help inspire everyone for the contest here.

Roman Adventure Contest- Prize Update

A quick update for the contest.

My lovely wife Mona has graciously offered to provide commissioned character portraits for 1st-3rd place winners. Many of you are already familiar with her work, as it has been featured on my blog before and on a couple of other OSR blogs. There is also a link to her Deviantart gallery to the left. So get out there and get busy writing, for the Senate and People of Rome!

Io Saturnalia!

As I celebrate my return to regular blogging, the ancient Roman festival of Saturnalia and my recent election as Plebeian Tribune in Nova Roma, I also am here to announce a new themed contest. You can probably guess the theme this time around is “The Might and Glory of Rome”. Rome offers us so much to build off of from their religion and their history for an adventure contest- Legions, Gladiators, Senatorial intrigue, Conquest, Civil Wars and interaction with other ancient cultures. Not to mention distinctive periods within Roman history, me, I am a late republic/early empire kind of a guy, but a lot of people are really into Rome at her height under her best emperors Trajan, Hadrian and Marcus Aurelius.

So, I am not placing too many rules on this contest as far as content length, we've run into issues with that before; what I am looking for is a Roman themed adventure. It can be in One-Page-Dungeon format or it can be a short adventure or a giant hex-crawl; it's up to you, what you want to submit as an entry, each entry will be judged on it's own merit by my veteran panel of judges. Multiple entries are permitted, but remember- you may end up competing against yourself for the top spot! The adventure can take place in a purely historical Roman setting, or it can be a Roman themed fantasy world or something in between, like a Roman empire with magic where the Satyrs and Nymphs are real. Submitting an adventure, unless you specifically state otherwise upon submitting said adventure, is granting permission for me to publish the adventures to the web for free. All adventures should use OSR standard rule types- Labyrinth Lord, Swords & Wizardry, OSRIC, D&D or AD&D- you know, the one's that are essentially compatible and interchangeable; plus they're the games I play and it's my contest, so I make the rules.

Oh, and just to help everyone out, inspiration-wise and what-not, a few days ago this was posted at the Land of Nod; and he thought it was a useless blog post.

Prizes, thus far, are-

-for each entry one spiffy refrigerator magnet from the Great Khan's blog, probably with a highly decorated envelope, courtesy of my lovely wife Mona.

-1^st, 2^nd and 3^rd place will each receive a pdf copy of 43 AD, the game that I helped edit and playtest.

-1^st place will receive an 8”x10” canvas print from easycanvasprints.com

As always I am looking to find more sponsors for the contest, and I'll try and renegotiate my sponsorship deal with Mick Leach from Eastern Front Studios; they just had a successful Kickstarter program for some Gladiator Dwarf miniatures that was partially the inspiration for this contest.

All entries should be emailed to me at williamjdowie AT gmail DOT com and should be received before midnight on the ides of January this contest is officially opened as of NOW.

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.

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...

Spending more energy elsewhere

I have been spending a lot more creative energy on my other blog lately than this one. I am going to be starting a campaign, hopefully on Thursday, that is play-testing rules (43 AD/Warband) that I may port over for use in my Garnia campaign world, and, given the history of that world, the events of that campaign could provide some more back-story for the entire setting.

I don't have anything else to say on that topic, so here's some stuff I got in the mail over the past few days that I forgot to show you all when it came in.

These guys are just "Arcane Legions" miniatures, they were labeled on EBay as "28mm hard plastic Roman sprue w/shields no bases"; why the deception? I don't know. I got them for $1.00 though and I should have known since I actually have the "Arcane Legions" starter set, I just never found anyone to play with. I did think they looked familiar.

"Creatures of Rokugan" for the 3rd edition of the Legend of the Five Rings RPG, I'd been waiting to get an inexpensive copy of this for a while, I was pleased with the result; although it inexplicably came with about 120 of the CCG cards too. I have now got two different two-player starter decks, a couple of one player starter decks and now these loose cards, maybe I should learn to play. You know, despite my disdain for CCGs. I mean if people are going to keep throwing them in as freebies with my wins on EBay...  

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.