My Mongol Adventure Contest

First- I want to point anyone who might be working on an adventure for my contest to Richard LeBlanc's Save Vs. Dragon blog because today he put up something that might prove useful to all of you- Creatures of the Steppe.

Second- We have officially gotten a sponsor: easycanvasprints.com They are providing an 8"x10" canvas print to the first prize winner. I am still looking for other sponsors too, but that's a pretty good start, eh?

That's about all I can think to write now, it's been a long day. I just wanted to update everybody on the contest and the awesome new resource available thanks to Richard!

Time to up the ante

I haven't received a single entry yet for my new Mongol themed contest yet, so I am going to open the vault and declare my prizes, regardless of what any sponsors pledge additionally.

First Prize - Tom Wham's "The Great Khan Game", it's theoretically both a Forgotten Realms product and a 2nd edition AD&D product from the labeling on the box, but in reality it is neither. Instead it's just a fun beer and pretzels game. My copy has been played a few times, but not since it was new. I gave it to my brother and he never played it despite loving the game, because he couldn't find opponents that were interested. Eventually it made it's way back to me. The box has some serious shelf wear, so it's to play not collect. Now it can be yours!

Second Prize - Al Qadim: A Dozen and One Adventures boxed set. This is an AD&D 2nd edition accessory for the Al Qadim campaign setting. I liked it and read through the short adventures, but never ran an Al Qadim game, so a lot of the specifics were of little use to me. This box has some shelf wear too and I can see one corner torn, again, not a collector's piece, but in good shape otherwise.

Third Prize - The Double Lankhmar Combo pack, 1st edition AD&D's "Lankhmar: City of Adventure" and 2nd edition's "Lankhmar: Thieves of Lankhmar". Both are in reasonably good shape for their age, but are really meant for play rather than a pristine collection.

So, I am hoping this will entice at least three people to write adventures for my contest!

Other news - The last contest's prizes will go in the mail today. I keep missing the Post Office, but I am really going to make a concerted effort to get the Magnets and Modules in the mail today.

Some More Miniatures

I got my wife involved in painting with me today while the kids were at school and we were both home sick. These are mostly old Grenadiers, but there is a Ral Partha, a couple of new Warlord Minis, and a couple I don't remamber.

The group shot, work by both of us, everything done today plus one guy Mona did a while ago that I don't think I posted a picture of.

Front and back of a Middle Earth Elrond mini that I first painted back in the 2nd edition days, he got some retouching today. He was my super bad-ass single classed Elven Mage back in the day.

A Warlord Mastiff, Mona painted this one. It reminds me of our Mastiff Harmony that died in July.

Another dog from Warlord, this is the small dog that comes with the "Celtic Civilians" pack. Mona painted him too, took her all of about two minutes.

A Grenadier Cleric, another one of Mona's pieces, this one was extensively redone from her earlier paint job that had been damaged over the years.

This Elf I originally painted years ago, but Mona restored and improved upon today, so I don't know who to credit. Maybe she gets an assist? I don't recall the manufacturer of this mini.

Front and back of another old Grenadier Cleric that Mona painted years ago and restored/extensively redid today. We dug a lot of old lead out of storage and were appalled at the state it was in.

This Ral Partha Cleric I painted today, he was my big project for the day.

Mona painted this guy months ago, we named him "Lorenzo" after the lantern bearer in our last D&D campaign. I could not remember if I had shared his picture yet.

Another old Grenadier Female Cleric painted by Mona years ago and fixed up today. We plan to seal these tomorrow and mount them on bases but other than that, they're done.

So, maybe tomorrow I'll get a Mongol mini painted up, I have a few primed and ready to go now, but no real Mongol content for the blog today. I am striking while the iron is hot and getting some minis painted up, who knows when the mood will strike the folk in my house again and Mona will let me take over the kitchen table for days at a time?

Some Miniatures

Warning- NO MONGOLS TODAY

My kids, Dalton and I painted these before our D&D game on Sunday. They are mostly old Grenadiers, I think the Viking is Heritage.

Group Shot.

Second Group Shot.

This was Dalton's first ever miniature, I wish I had a better camera or was a better photographer, but neither me nor Mona could get a good shot of her.

This was my 14 year old daughter Ember's first ever miniature. I think it shows real promise and we got a pretty good shot of this one, both front and back.

This was my son John's second mini ever. He has shown a lot of improvement just because he slowed down and didn't try to do too much with it.

This was my first miniature in at least 20 years start to finish. I started a couple earlier this year and lost confidence part way through, this guy I persevered on and finished. I am largely happy with the result, although I liked the back better than the front and none of those pictures turned out good. Not terribly thrilled with the color scheme either, but he's pretty much done.

A Viking dude I painted up just because I am running a Viking campaign. The pictures are blurry, and the black wash didn't pull out as much detail as I was hoping for, but he is an ancient miniature, from like the late 1970's I think, so I guess that'll happen. 

Four shots of the last mini I painted, I was feeling pretty confident by then and dry brushed on brighter metal over the main color, then black washed to get some shadows, but I don't think either mine or Mona's photos really captured the effect. I was pretty happy with the way this guy turned out, despite the fact that I broke most of his tail off when I tried to trim some mold flash off.

These guys just need to be based and they're done. We painted up several more that morning too, but not to completion. When those ones are done, I'll post those pictures too. Hopefully I'll have learned how to use my camera a bit better by then.

Mongol Adventure Contest- Things I Forgot

Eventually I'll remember to mention everything in one post when I announce a contest, but it wasn't for this one.

The adventures should be Swords & Wizardry, B/X D&D (Labyrinth Lord) or AD&D (AEC) compatible. Those are the gaming languages I speak best.

Multiple entries are allowed.

The contest will be running through October 31st, 2012.

EDIT- I have extended the deadline to November 30th, 2012.

The prizes, if none of my prospective sponsors come through, will include sweet loot from my personal hoard. Last grand prize was a copy of "GDQ 1-7 Queen of the Spiders". This time I am thinking of a matched set of "Lankhmar: City of Adventure" and "Lankhmar: Thieves of Lankhmar" for the grand prize and working my way down from there, but I am flexible.

That said, if you want to sponsor the contest, send me an email and we'll talk!

To clarify my earlier post- it doesn't HAVE to be a wilderness adventure, any type of adventure is cool, as long as we make it Mongol themed. Use your imaginations!

If you are interested in being a judge, email me and I'll send you a magnet too.

My email address is williamjdowie AT gmail DOT com in case you all missed my late edit to my last post.

That's about all for today, today is my daughter Ashli's 20th birthday and I hope it's a good one, she's had a rough year with learning to live with a disability and depression stemming from that. I pray 20 will be easier for her than 19 was.

New Contest

In keeping with Mongol Month the theme of the contest is Mongols*- the twist is that the Mongols should be the heroes, not the villains that they are generally portrayed as. This doesn't really preclude there also being Mongol villains, but I'd like to see some Mongol heroes for a change.

The format is short adventure- not necessarily a One-Page Dungeon style format, but it can be, although I'd like to see more "wilderness" type adventures to take advantage of the Mongols horse archery skills; but I am not limiting people to a single page this time around.

This is a real chance for you all to show how much you know about the Mongols (or learn something new) and win some cool prizes for doing something fun!

I definitely intend to compile all of the entries into one file after the contest for ease of download, just an FYI for anyone contributing an adventure, if you are uncomfortable with me redistributing your work please mention that when you send your entry and I'll leave yours out of the compilation, otherwise I will assume that you read this and are OK with my redistribution.

As before, I will send everyone who enters the contest a cool refrigerator magnet. For some of you this will be a second or fifth, but I still have a bunch, so while supplies last they're up for grabs.

As to the other prizes, I haven't decided yet, because I am waiting to hear back from potential sponsors, but if nothing else I'll come up with something good from my own collection probably for the top three this time.

I'd also like to recruit a couple more judges for this time around, last time the contest was really close and I think the points might spread out a little more if the adventures were graded by more people

EDIT- it probably couldn't hurt if I told everybody where to send their submissions, my email address is williamjdowie AT gmail DOT com, sorry about that omission. 

*I suppose I should point out that the "Mongols" should be a D&D facsimile of real world Mongols, based on their culture, with their names and social structure, mythology, etc. This gives a little more room for the fantasy part of fantasy role-playing.  

Mongols in the Mega-Dungeon!

Not really, but I am trying to keep up my theme for the month, which seems to be kept more in the lapse and mention than in the use, and I wanted to jump on the OSR's latest bandwagon – the “death” of the Mega-Dungeon. Just to be clear, I think a Mongol party in a Mega-Dungeon setting would be cool, but it's not really my topic for today, as I have usually*, at best, seen one Mongol-esque character in any given (A)D&D adventuring party. That character was usually played by me or my buddy Darryl.

Anyway, I am glad this announcement came just in time for me to start my own Mega-Dungeon campaign. My players needed to be told we weren't having fun and we were playing D&D wrong. Wait, we were having fun and it seems to me that means we were playing it right, am I right? I spent decades away from the dungeon and concentrated on world building, wilderness adventures, politics and war as a means for providing adventures for my players with only the occasional subterranean foray into a small “dungeon”, more likely a sewer or cave, occasionally ruins with underground bits.

My new Mega-Dungeon has literally miles of tunnels and is very unfinished. I started mapping from the entrance that the PC's were likely to use and went from there. I figure I'll map about what I figure might be a little more than I need in any given direction over the course of the week before we play and key it minimally, I work better that way. I have an overall theme for the dungeon and a sub-theme for each dungeon area that I have started. I can improvise where I need to if the players do something unexpected, and I don't have to do a ton of extra prep work. I am cool with this, my players are cool with it too.

I have read that people are complaining that they aren't getting enough encounter time in, that Mega-Dungeon design is to blame, that 2^nd edition style railroads might be better for grown-ups who don't have a lot of time on their hands; that way they'll get their hero time in every time they play and have cool stories to tell. Unlike a lot of OSR types I was never 100% against the 2^nd edition style, except when it got abusively railroad-ey, that's poor module design though, not necessarily a condemnation of the style in and of itself. I have designed and run a bunch of really fun 2^nd edition style adventures, mostly during the 2^nd edition years. But if you don't have a cool story to tell after the game, it's not the dungeon's fault; it is probably your fault, it might be your DM's fault, but it isn't the type of play that's at fault for you not having fun. You get out of RPGs what you put into them, if this style of play is too foreign for you to accept as fun then move along, but there are plenty of people out there that can and do enjoy the Mega-Dungeon as a D&D experience.

I apologize for the more rambling than normal nature of this post, my kids brought home some sickness from school for me and clear thinking is not really working all that well at the moment. Anyway, courtesy of EBay, here is your actual Mongol content today-

This was the second time I bought this guy on EBay, the first time he never made it to me. He's an old Games Workshop model. I look forward to painting him up before the month is done!

*The exception to the rule- twice I have been involved in Steppe Warrior D&D games and everyone played a Mongol type character there. Once I DMed the “Tomb of Horrors”, that didn't last long or end well; and once Darryl DMed a homebrew adventure for a gathering of Steppe Warriors, that went better and lasted longer, but we were all brand new to 3e then and it broke up before we were done too.

One Page Dungeon Contest Winners

Deep into Mongol Month we have finally gotten the results from the last of the judges and I tallied them up today.

Before I announce the winners of my top three prizes though, I'd like to share where I got the cool prizes from - all of the magnets, both refrigerator magnets and bumper sticker magnets I got from BuildASign.com . They specialize in banners and signs, but were able to meet my magnet needs easily and I am most pleased with their product, both in price and quality, and the service, which was speedy.

They have a sister site easycanvasprints.com that I can see myself using in the future too.
In case everyone doesn't remember what the magnets look like, here they are again -

Once again, I'd like to thank everyone who participated in the One Page Dungeon contest, all of the judges agreed that it was really tough to choose a winner and the top three were separated by a single point each.

Third place and a cool bumper sticker style magnet goes to Richard J. LeBlanc Jr. of New Big Dragon Games for "Þrymjahellir" which is available for download at his Save vs. Dragon blog in both one and two page versions.

Second place and another bumper sticker magnet goes to Gustie LaRu of the "Dungeon of Signs" blog for "Hel's Crow's Final Rest", which is available here.

So, the grand prize, the big, bumper sticker magnet and a choice of old TSR modules from my collection goes to Bard Bowman of the Clash of Spear on Shield blog for "The Dødsbakken", available here.

Congratulations to the winners, and I have to say this was great fun. I really look forward to next time.

Now, because it is Mongol Month, I feel I need to at least give you all a bit of trivia, so here you go- The Mongol Empire was the largest land based empire ever seen on the face of the Earth. It encompassed the bulk of Asia and part of Europe. The last ruling direct descendant of Genghis Khan was deposed by the Czars in the mid-18th century, more than five centuries after Genghis Khan died.

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.

Three Days In...

And I haven't got much to show for Mongol month yet. I have some ideas, but getting them down is a little rough right now. I am working on a Steppe Nomad type class for Labyrinth Lord (B/X D&D) and I keep adding too much to it and needing to scale it back. I am a bit of a Mongol fanboy I guess.

Anyway, I have been doing some refresher reading through the Mongol section of my library to keep things fresh for me, and I got this book in the mail from Amazon today-

I kind of like these "Life in the time of" type books, so I am a little surprised I never had one for the Mongols, although I guess they are a bit of a specialist topic.

Anyway, between writers block and fanboyism, I also tried to find some decent mongol type miniatures to paint up for Mongol month, but I keep coming back to The Assault Group and they're a British company and therefore pricier than I really want to go with for wargame quality miniatures, so anyone who can point me elsewhere would be a real help.

Anyone got anything Mongol oriented they'd like to see? Any questions they'd like answered? I am planning on visiting my longtime collaborator Darryl tomorrow and we are the go-to Mongol answer guys. I think we should put together an adventure featuring my, as yet unmade, Steppe Nomad class and post it here for you all to use and enjoy. Maybe as a finale to the Month? That would give us time to come up with something cool. I don't know, I'll ask him what he thinks tomorrow. I am tired and rambling more than usual, so good night everyone!

October is Mongol Month

I declare it to be so, for no other reason than I need a focus to bring me back to writing regularly and drag me out of my depressed state. I figure it makes a good focus because I haven't already done it, I know a lot about the Mongols and their history, but haven't really applied it to gaming particularly, and it'll drag me back to work, tangentially anyway, on my Oriental Adventures project - at this point I think I should start calling it a magnum opus, but that may be presumptuous. That said, I do refer to myself as "The Great Khan", so I guess we can expect a bit of presumption from me. I digress though.

September was a long, sad month for me. My sister's memorial service is next Saturday at my parent's church and I hope that by saying my public goodbye that I can start putting some of this sadness behind me and get back to some of the productive uses of my free time that I had in the past. I did start designing a new RPG the other day, almost by accident, because I couldn't sleep and I didn't want to wake up my wife. I think it's a pretty good start, but we'll see where it goes; if it amounts to anything good I'll present it here for everyone to check out.

So, I'll try and get back up to at least a couple of posts a week here and this month will be filled with Mongol themed goodness. I'll also have the results of the Viking themed One Page Dungeon contest within a day or two when I hear back from the other judges on their final opinions.

Lastly, does anyone know who manufactures good Mongol/Steppe Warrior miniatures these days? 28mm is preferred, although 25mm is acceptable usually and I'd also prefer a US manufacturer or at least a US distributor to keep shipping costs down.

Just One Day Left

There is just one day left to get in on the Viking themed One Page Dungeon Contest I am running here, in 24 hours no more submissions will be accepted. Win cool, old TSR stuff from the Khakhan's hoard as a prize or a cool car bumper sticker style magnet! Or both! Every entry gets a free refrigerator magnet!

This has been a public service announcement from the Great Khan to the old school gaming community.

I know this'll come as a shock...

...especially to everyone that knows me, but I took a "Which Star Trek character are you?" quiz, and this is the result-


Your results:
You are Worf

Worf 80% Spock 60% Uhura 60% Mr. Sulu 60% Jean-Luc Picard 60% Chekov 55% James T. Kirk (Captain) 45% Will Riker 45% Geordi LaForge 40% Mr. Scott 30% Beverly Crusher 30% Deanna Troi 30% Data 29% Leonard McCoy (Bones) 25% An Expendable Character (Redshirt) 0%

You are trained in the art of combat and are usually intimidating.

Click here to take the Star Trek Personality Quiz

I am slowly getting back into the swing of things here. I am mostly playing catch up, reading blogs I haven't read for the last couple of weeks and I did try out a new RPG last weekend, it was pretty good. There's still time for anyone to enter the One Page Dungeon Contest, and I have plenty of magnets left.

OK, I am back...

Kind of anyway.

It's been a rough week since my sister died, but I finally got the refrigerator magnets out in the mail today that I had planned to do last Monday and I am writing here again. I don't have a lot to say, but I am trying to move back towards normal in my daily life, and that means getting back to my blog and talking about games. My partner in crime, Darryl Cook, has about finished up a beta version of the "World of Garnia Rules-Lite System" or "WoGRLS", pronounced "Whoa Girls"- it's a working title, but it amuses us; and we're looking for people to playtest it. It is a really rules lite fantasy RPG that is based on a slightly more complex game that he and I designed back in the 90s and never finished. We couldn't get the magic right, he's got it down pretty good now, and he's about ready to release it into the wild, we plan on packaging it with our world book when we put it out there for you all.

I should also mention that I am still running a one page dungeon contest, viking themed, it actually doesn't have to be a dungeon though, so I guess I should call it a one page adventure contest. Also, since I still have a ton of extra magnets, I guess I'll just let everyone have one, whether they participate or not. I was going to do that anyway, I just wanted to give everyone incentive to enter the contest.

Anyway, thanks everyone for the massive outpouring of sympathy. I really appreciate it and so does the rest of my family.

In closing, if you all want a magnet, or want to contact me about WoGRLS, or for any other reason really, my email address is williamjdowie AT gmail DOT com I haven't been on the internet much over the past week, but I'll be getting back up to speed here pretty quick I'd imagine.

My sister died today

While the rest of the country is busy remembering 9/11/2001 and the terrorist attacks on that day, I am going to never forget 9/11/2012, the day Lesa Jane Hassett, my only sister, died. She had been suffering from an illness for a while, but kept the details pretty much to herself, so the rest of the family didn't really know how bad it was until quite recently. It was easy really, she lived on Long Island and the rest of us live in upstate New York over 300 miles away. She went into the hospital for the last time on Sunday afternoon and died this morning. Our parents and her husband were with her at the end, her three children had been sent home for the night. She was 46 years old.

She was my big sister, 3 years older than me and when we were kids she always had my back. I didn't always have an easy time of things being a smart, nerdy kid back in the 1970s and 80s, even after I got to be bigger than everybody else, but she was always more socially adept than me and managed to smooth over my rough patches most of the time with bullies. When that didn't work she made sure they knew she would not hesitate to jump into the fray on my side if it came down to it, and she did, on more than one occasion. She also legitimately saved my life twice, both times from being hit by careless drivers when I was small, by throwing herself bodily at me and knocking me out of the way at risk to herself. She was fearless and protective.

She was a daughter, a wife and a mother too, but I only really knew her as a big sister and I will really miss her.

This was the last time all three of us kids were together, for scale Lesa is 5'7" and Jon is 6'1", it was taken at her daughter Shelby's graduation party in my parent's yard - July 2010.

This is one of those studio photos that my parents used to make us get every year back in the 1970s.

This is my mom, Lesa and me as a baby, so 1969-70 depending on how many months old I am here, I am bad at guessing baby ages, even my own.

Rest in peace

 Lesa Jane Hassett

April 15th 1966 - September 11th 2012