Con of the Cob post-mortem

Had a great deal of fun at Con-on-the-Cob, even though She-who-must-be-obeyed became ill and missed the whole thing. Did meet Tim Shorts who gave me copies of his 'zine the Manor. Awesome 'zine, the folded 8" x 11" sheets stapled in the middle brought back memories. It seems to follow a one full dungeon, one setting concept format, with short new monsters, new spells, new magic items articles sprinkled in. He also had a couple 4"x 5.5" booklets which were just one dungeon. Played Dementalism with Andy Hopp on Thursday Night at the Drink and Draw. It kind of like the card game Concentration but with three cards for each match rather than two (two cards pair as normal, however if another player finds the third card and correctly guess which face down pair is a match, he can steal the pair from you). The card are decorated with the denizens of Andy's "Mutha Oith" and his usual zaniness for all sorts of special cards. I of course had to buy the game and sign up for the expansion pack kickstarter. You can sign up for the kickstarter too if you hurry.

Did a whirlwind tour of the dealers room with my son on Friday. He was more interested in the "Toys are Us" we visited on the way home, although he did get a couple of Star Trek action figures at the con. Picked through the used bins for more Mystara Gazetteers, but since it was mostly the same dealers as last spring's AnCon, I had already cleaned them out. One dealer had a good collection of print versions of the OSR small press rules. However, since I had .pdfs of the ones that interested me already and only limited space for dead tree editions (at least until I can talk She-who-must-be-obeyed into converting more of the living room into a library). My son did wait patiently while I sat in on a seminar on game design (I missed the RPG one, but the Board game one was interesting too).

Saturday was devoted totally to the fourthcore "Fane of the Heresiarch" (***Update*** new link found here). Although the adventure was a great deal of fun, and while its location in a private room near the con suite made it easier to hear the DM and concentrate, it did mean I missed my chance to stop by Digital Orc's Menagerie of the Ice Lord and say hi to my fellow bloggers (other than Tim Shorts, whom I have already mentioned). Was going to stop by at diner, but since we were running behind we only took a half hour (which is enough time to drive to the restaurant pick up diner to go and come back, DM packed a sandwich). When I got out of the game at 11 PM most of the gamers had packed things up already.

Didn't get a chance to go down Sunday. Filled my time with kickstarters instead. New ones include:

1. Legendary Games Pathfinder Books in Print (I only signed up for the .pdfs)
2. The Lost Lands: Sword of Air (Being a big fan of Bill Webb and Frog God games this was inevitable)
3. Adventures in the East Mark - Red Box (a bit of a risk, but worth a $30 bet for a boxed set)
4. Dementalism Expansion sets (See above, I am signed up to get all three expansions)

Con-on-the-Cob and odds and ends

I will be definitely be at Con-on-the-Cob this week (at least some of the time). I will not be DM the 4e games I usually ran, as the 4e organizers jumped ship for pathfinder, and I could not get my you-know-what together to add events on my own. I am signed up for the Saturday afternoon 4core game, but when I last checked  was the only one signed up, so I'll have to play it by ear. I am on furlough from the federal government, so you'd think I'd get lots done. Unfortunately furlough (especially one this stupid) is not conducive to a creative mindset. I spent most of last week trying to get signed up for unemployment just in case our illustrious Congress reneges on the House proposal to pay us (She-who-must-be-obeyed thinks they make unemployment extra hard to keep the applicants down). Finished up my long postponed taxes (thanks to automatic extensions Oct 15th is the new April 15th). Filled the rest of the time with reading books, and watching way too many Yogcast videos (Wool Race is a four part 80 minute video of the crew getting killed because they are too lazy to build a path of torches from the spawn point to where they are digging for the wool. Moonquest sounded more promising, but after four half-hour videos they have succeeded in building a base underground with a door {added in episode 4}. Simon's team at least seems to run on the sensible strategy of when in doubt dig. Sips team wasted the first six minutes of their video talking about "twerking in microgravity". I didn't watch the three other videos available for Sips team). Books a bit more profitable, got through five last week. Finally finished "Toll the Hounds" which I bought for my nook last spring. Steve Erikson  "Toll the Hounds" is a bit of a slog, too much angst, not enough action. However, it is still filled with those wild flights of Fantasy I read Steve Erikson for. "Dust and Dreams" seems to be going a bit better. Also noteworthy was "The Amber Room" about the fate of the Catherine the Greats Czarist treasure a room paneled in amber, and what happened to in World War Two. The Room still remains on the missing list, but the authors attempts to review the iron curtain archives on it read like a spy novel. I definitely recommend the "The Amber Room". Hopefully I'll get going on my Dungeontangle geomorphs inspired by reading the "Zentangle Untangled" book (If your already a doodler like me, don't waste you're time with the book, Zentangle seems mostly a marketing ploy {although some of the patterns are pretty cool}, and more information is available on the web than in the book). Lets close with some Gypsy Punk!

The Saga of a Zahr-Tann Army

Guest post by she-who-must-be-obeyed

Zahr-Tann is the name of an Eldar Craftworld in games workshop’s game 40 K.  About four years ago Himself found some bargains in a garage sale or some place and picked up a few previously used Eldar tanks. Then he happened upon a partially worked on army at the Warzone.  Fortunately for me the work that had been done was just gluing so I did not need to repaint like I did with the bargain tanks, oh and he got some kits to make the painted falcons into wave serpents. Plus he actually bought a new kit of guardians for me to make up.  Much scraping, ungluing, re-gluing and painting later he mentioned the name of the Craftworld.  It has no Craftworld insignia but he found someone working on one who is on a forum that will not recognize my plea to join it. So I played with my favorite of his suggestions and came up with my own version.  Since I am not allowed to post it there I decided to post it in his blog.  At least it gets the thing out into cyber-space.

Let us know what you think.

P.S. The pick of Zahr-Tann is not quite capricious as she-who-must-be-obeyed indicates. It is based on the paint scheme of my favorite cool-mini wave serpent "Last trick of Loyso Pandokhva" which uses a blue and bronze color scheme closest to that of Zahr-Tann. Its not my fault GW only mentions this craftworld once on a webpage which has since disappeared (given the silliness associated with many official craftworlds, perhaps its disappearance is a good thing). I'll try and get some pictures of the tanks she-who-must-be-obeyed painted later.

*****New****
Here is a picture of the first painted tank. Although most of the army will be Waveserpents the Falcon was already assembled from a prior effort, so she-who-must-be-obeyed painted it first.

13th age arrives!

My Thirteenth Age pre-order arrived today! With the stuff I got yesterday, it feels like Christmas in August. Does the arrival of my long-lost kickstarters and pre-orders signal the coming of Gen-Con? Magic eight ball says uncertain. Even at this late my plans for traveling to Gen-Con remain uncertain as well. Since she is not able to travel to GenCon with me she-who-must-be-obeyed has been giving my travel plans a serious "Frowny Face". The recent collapse of the plan b option of bringing my mother to Cleveland to visit instead has resulted in a possible opening (my mother lives near Indianapolis so the GenCon trip is a two-fer).  Since my mother is no longer willing to make long drives herself, my sister was going to act as chauffer and visit the Rock Hall with one of her friends as well. My mother (in her 80's) is fine, my sister in her (in 50's) is having gall bladder problems. Oh well! as long as cool stuff keeps arriving in the mail I no longer need to blow eighty bucks just for the right to spend money in the GenCon dealers room (since they have canceled all the fourth edition D&D events I would of played in the dealers room is about it for GenCon these days). I though about volunteering to DM 5th edition (I did read the playtest rules one or two iterations back, and since they are "simplifing" the rules how hard could it be?) but since I can neither confirm or deny my travel plans its kind of hard for me to commit. Some reviews of all my new cool stuff later, I promise!

Three Developments

Got my hardbacks from the razor coast kickstarter yesterday, have to get a review of the them up soon.

Emperors Choice has placed some of their Arduin products as .pdf on Drivethru RPG. Most Arduin stuff, although it is hard to play straight from the book, I find chock full of novel ideas. Hopefully having them as .pdf will make them a little more widespread.

Dyson of Dyson's Delves has placed his Dodecaheron fanzine Drivethru RPG. Normally I am a little perturbed when things that used to be free start to sell for cash. However Dyson has placed them as a pay-what-you-want, so you can still pick them up for free or send a little cash Dyson's way if you want to, and I am O.K. with that.

Swag from Origins and Free RPG day

Little behind in posting this. Although both Origins and Free RPG day were on the same weekend I still made it to both. Purchases at Origins included:

 a hard copy of Dungeon World, One of my players said it might be a good replacement for 4e when 4e collapses

Shroud of Ancients, a new game system from the folks who did the terror at twinleaf d20, I like its class-less approach to characters, and after spending a half hour at the booth talking I couldn't not buy it.

Second City Boxed set from Legend of Five Rings, three books City Guide, NPC Guide, and Campaign Adventure, lots of extras including dice bag, DM screen and deluxe character sheets, only dissapointing part was that map, being a City on a plain laid out in a rectangular grid it was just not exicting

Bunch of GW stuff, it appears GW has decided to start paying attention to this convention once again. Of course they have just opened a new store in Columbus and are expecting to open another in Cleveland later in the summer. Purchases included the new plastic eldar farseer, Tamurkan the Throne of Chaos book (so I can blow the dust off my chaos dwarf army), and Imperial Armor Masterclass II.

Talked to some guys who had recently kickstarted a new dragon led armies miniature game. However they didn't have anything to sell yet (Note to aspiring game companies, if you buy a booth at a major convention bring something to sell).

Ran into a friend from work Dwanye, who is trying to kickstater a pulp art image database. I sent him over to Andy Hopp booth to see about a table at Con-on-the-Cobb (a great little convention in Huson, OH on October 17-20)

For free roleplaying day I had to drive to Sandusky, about an hour away from my house, as Northeast Ohio is a black hole for Free RPG day. Nice store, The Hero Zone , but I am not Free RPG day was such a big hit for them, since I arrived at 2 pm and was still able to pick up most of the titles I was hoping for (Nowhere the 500+ person turn-out at my local comic book store for free comic book day). I did have to show my ID for "Better than any Man" something a middle aged man with 12" white beard finds humorous, the Gamestop  I visited wanted proof that I was over 18 as well, making it twice in one day. Titles included:

Better than any Man
Cosmic Patrol
Reap the Whirlwind
We be Goblins Too
Hall of Bones
Dungeon Crawl Classics Xcrawl

Could have picked up the Tunnels and Trolls adventure as well but since I am not fond of Tunnels and Trolls I gave it a pass. I'll try to review some of these items in a future post.

P.S. She-who-must-be-obeyed will get the Masterclass II for her birthday, I don't want to distract her with it now as she is happily glueing wave serpents together, and has painted the falcon we had already put together in the Zahr-Tann paint scheme seen on the "Last Trick of Loyso Pandokhva"(just the paint scheme not the faces).

Obscure RPG Day Adventure Revenge of Pleasant Corners

An Advanced Dungeons and Dragons Tournament, we published as the summer "zine" when I was President of the Brass Dragon Society back in 1982. Run at Dragon Flight 1 (Contest winner for the write a tournament for Dragon Flight contest). We mailed a copy to each of the 30 odd Brass Dragon club members, may have sold a few more at Dragon Flight itself, the balance of the print run (at least 100) went to the the authors basement. Here's the hook reproduced in all its dot-matrix glory. Whole module was printed on my Apple II+ thermal printer, luckily once you xerox the thermal paper the xerox doesn't fade with age (I would like to forget about hand corrections done in black sharpie, other than to mention it's "Pleasant" not "Pleasent") 

A very well crafted basic orc pit for NINE players. Run on a four hour time limit, scored on how many rooms you got through, and what you did while getting there. Usually done by gathering the judges together having each one describe his parties performance, then ranking them by consensus. Many groups did not make it past the entrance ambush. The map by she_who_must_be_obeyed is reproduced below.

I'd reprint this adventure, but the way the Brass Dragon Society did thing the copyright reverts to the author. Maybe Dave Butler still has a few copies in his basement on Capital hill, if he's still in the Seattle area.