Tuesday, May 21, 2013

YouTube Finds. . .

Doing a little searching on YouTube and found some gems. Don't know how long these will last (title links go to Wikipedia entries):


Hawk the Slayer




Wizards




Fire & Ice (sorry, can't embed)
http://youtu.be/ZkEP2Afx2AU



Starcrash




Cherry 2000




The Master (aka Three Evil Masters)




Jabberwocky




The Dungeonmaster




The Hobgoblin (Quest for the Mighty Sword)

(okay, this isn't a gem!)

Sunday, May 19, 2013

Weekend Bookface, Part 2

Bookface (again)!


The Gold Standard from the Dragonsfoot forums.




Labyrinths of Madness by Gavin Norman of City of Iron.




Dungeons & Dragons Variant Edition, by Don Jolly. Be sure to check out his little games Gax & Vox, too! And his book, The Flapjack Canyon, free in PDF from Lulu.com.





Options for Swords &Wizardry Complete: Psionics, by Cameron DuBeers. Also, be sure to check out his module There's Something Rotten in Riverton, which I can't get to print in booklet form.




The Cave of Nanoc, by Dylan Hartwell.




Blood Ceremony of the Voivode, by Ben Djarum.

Friday, May 17, 2013

Friday Bookface

Mail call!



CRAWLzine #7! Awesome stuff from Rev. Dak. Also, be sure to check out the web extra!


Christian Walker is back in action with two new one-sheet zines!


First up is Shudde M'ell Confidential, for Call of Cthulhu. He's got two issue out so far, and a Pinterest board with extra content (beats the hell out of the usual use of Pinterest, which is fashion and food and mommy advice. Also, best line in #2: "Starlets do not fight. They have people for that." Precious, baby, precious!


This next one from Christian is I Want to Live in Los Angeles, which explores a modern setting for Basic Fantasy Role Playing.


And check this out: I can write off my long reach stapler as a legitimate business expense:


My Creative Writing students made a zine as one of their final products. I only made enough copies for the class. Here's the back cover:



Also, the background for future Bookface installments will soon change. I'm moving offices soon, and it's an upgrade. I'll finally have an office with a window. Sweet!

Tuesday, May 14, 2013

Hot Damn, Just Go Read This.

This post has nothing to do with RPGs.

Just go read this. If you can get through it without getting a lump in your throat, you aren't alive.

This is one of the best profiles I've read in a long time.

Seriously, click on that link and read the whole damn thing.

Announcement: Conan Contest Winner!



The Conan Contest was held during March and early April, with the winner promised a funked-up copy of this book:



The contest garned two entries:

The Cave of Nanoc by Dylan Hartwell aka Digital Orc

The Cave of Nanoc is a Labyrinth Lord-compatible one-shot adventure ripe with Conan references throughout, both to Ahh-nold's film version and the stories of REH. The main action has the hero donning a pair of boots that lets a PC walk upside down on the ceiling and then sends the party into a cave to battle dangerous Nanoc bats, poisonous scorpion-like Climbers, and a seductive sorceress who hides a bowel-cleansing secret (no, not the secret to bowel-cleansing, but . . . oh, nevermind). While the scenario comes off a bit jokey on first read, this truly has the potential for an early TPK if the players don't make wise decisions early on.


Bathhouse of Blood by Tedankhamen, aka Ted Bonnah.

Bathhouse of Blood is a Swords & Wizardry / Age of Conan adventure for 3-6 3rd level characters focused on the Zanadar Bathhouse its "employees". References to Hyborian geography appear in the flavor text throughout and the plot revolves around a main baddy who is cut from the same cloth as many of Conan adversaries (and I'm thinking of the Marvel comics/magazine Conan here). The adventure itself is open-ended and, depending on how the PCs play it, the party could end up definitely worse off than they started, especially if they aren't of sufficient strength when they enter the lower levels OR they get too curious about the main level.



So. . .who's the winner?

I'd love to have called it a draw. But I couldn't. So I flipped a coin; The Cave of Nanoc was heads, Bathhouse of Blood was tails.

Curse the two-faced god of coin flipping!

It came up tails.

Ted, hit me up with your mailing info @ mwschmeer AT gmail DOT com so I can ship you your prize!

And Dylan, check your email in the next day or so for a special surprise. Make sure you have a comics reader handy. I recommend Sequential on the Mac and HoneyView on Windows.

Blogger Troubles

I haven't even logged into Blogger or checked this blog since the first week of May, as I was knee-deep into final exam preps and now I am neck-deep in exam week and exam grading. Needless to say, I'm a bit overwhelmed at the moment.

AND now I find out that Blogger decided to eat a post I had scheduled to appear on May 3rd that announced the winner of the Conan Contest. Harrumph!

Check back soon for the announcement.

Also, I made this:



It's a map connecting all of the sample dungeons from TSR-era D&D, from the original edition to The Classic Game of Dungeons & Dragons.

You can grab a PDF here.