To Gary. Cheers!

I'm not the most eloquent of people, indeed I can be downright tongue-tied at times, but I cannot let today go by without a few words and a gentle prod towards something that sits fairly near to the heart of the legacy of our hobby.  July 27th marks Gary Gygax's birthday, and in recognition of that fact I want to direct attention towards the Gygax Memorial Fund.

There's a few things that the various people behind the GMF are doing to assist in the further developments of the project. In particular, is their attendance at GenCon, the convention that Gary Gygax began, between August 4th and August 7th. At their booth (number 1541, the Old School Renaissance booth, for those interested), Gail Gygax will be talking about conversations she had with her husband before his death about how he wanted to be remembered, the resulting vision for the statue, and the goals of the Memorial Fund. Gail will also be presenting the ENnie Awards on Friday night.  They will also be taking donations, and offering donator rewards of various treasure types.


There's also talk of a Kickstarter project to aid in fundraising for the statue.  $500k across everyone who's ever played D&D in it's many iterations, or any of the many facsimiles that came after seems like an incredibly achievable goal. If you can, PLEASE head on over to the Gygax Memorial Fund website and do your bit, even if it's only the cost of a d20. Every drop in the ocean adds up in the end and this is a worthy cause. Also, keep in mind that the GMF has already achieved it's goal of becoming an officially recognised 501(c)3 nonprofit corporation, with all the tax-deductable goodness that that entails.

In closing I want to quote Paul Hughes from the introduction to "Cheers, Gary.", because I think this line gives us an apt and genuinely fitting way to mark Gary's birthday.

"...since Gary enjoyed a fine cocktail, let me lift a Bombay Sapphire martini and propose a toast: "To Gary. Cheers."

So at dinner today, or afterwards wherever you are, please raise your glasses and toast the birthday of one of the fathers of modern imagination very simply, but with feeling.  To Gary. Cheers!

Swamp prototype, with pics!

Finally, the first (of hopefully, many!) swamp terrain piece I've done is complete.  It's not perfect, and I'd surely like to add more 'depth' to it, but I fudged somewhat to allow it to scale reasonably well across Ogre, Battletech and even stretch to 15mm 'Armies of Greyhawk' scale.

Considering the compromises, I think it's turned out quite well. I've also learned a LOT about the process, and think the next few pieces will only look better and better with each iteration.  With the swamps done, then I'm left considering whether it's lakes and river features next, or more trees. Whatever I choose, terrain wise, I'm just glad that my table is gradually getting populated. That being said, I DO have a number of rather sexy looking terrain pieces I picked up at Dexcon that need basing and painting... Then there's the half-built wreckage markers I'm putting together for Ogre minis... Or I could finally get to painting a few more Canopian 'mechs... Or finishing off the Marik colour testbeds for my wife's 'mechs... Or the character sketch of my newest AD&D character...

...

*twitch*


Anyway. Enjoy the picture of the swamp prototype and glamour shots of Caroline the Fencer and some Pan-Euro forces modeling the latest in red "swamp camo".

Armies of Greyhawk 10 - Irongate and the Iron Hills

A double post today, as herein resides the lists for both Irongate and the demihumans of the Iron Hills. Happy gaming!

Armies of Irongate and the Iron Hills (.ods file, hosted by Mediafire. IrongateIronHills1.0.90.ods).

Baby's first US Con.

Okay, okay. By baby I mean me... Of course, given the games I lean towards I usually am the youngest player so -technically-... ANYWAY. As it's all the rage, and thoroughly fashionable, I figured I'd toss up a few words about what I did, how it was and what I brought home from Dexcon. 

WHAT I DID:
Thursday was my first trip into the dealer's room.  From that voyage came four 1e modules. Originals of Against the Cult of the Reptile God, the Secret of Bone Hill, the Isle of Dread and the Keep on the Borderlands are all now mine!  I also picked up an original copy of Grimtooth's Traps for the princely sum of $1. Thursday also brought a game of Nuclear War, actually two, because we blew through the first in about 20 minutes...  I was crushingly destroyed both times, alas!  After the game, it was decided to get an early exit as nothing seriously called enough to make a stay until midnight worth it, especially considering the busy next two days.

Friday began with the Old School Revival seminar, which was very enjoyable, although with it's timing being horribly placed against every other morning event by the con organizer, it lacked a large assembly. The fact that it had been incorrectly advertised on the con handouts as being Thursday night didn't help any either. That was no doubt some evil sabotage by the 4e crowd.

Nevermind though, as the dealer's room called once more and two new sets of dice (one Game Science set in amber and one lovely polished solid pewter set) became mine. I'm a dice fiend, and I didn't have the like of either, so they rather drew me in.  I also snagged a fill-in at the end of a game of Ghost Tower of Inverness almost immediately after leaving, by virtue of luckily coming across the game which already had a good friend of mine playing in it who asked if I could take over the role of the MU who had departed just minutes earlier.  It was run by a really great DM, though I swear he had the powers of Graviton when calling for 1's on our saves (and kinda looked a little like him too, hmm...).  Needless to say, we suffered a humiliating TPK against a medusa, with my mage (being the possessor of Stone to Flesh) being the first to go with the aforementioned roll of a 1 even before initiative had been rolled. Curses!

After food and a wander with friends, I sat in on a generously gifted 'over number' spot for I6 - Ravenloft run by the same DM that had been so merciless with that medusa...  All ends well, though, as we paid back his devious ways with a thoroughly brutal slaughter and thus victory over Strahd!  Woo!  Just before the decapitation and victory in Ravenloft my wife finally arrived and caught up with me at the con - I'm quite certain that it was this fact that changed my luck, because my dice almost miraculously improved at this point. No, I'm really not kidding!

The third game I squeezed in was a minis game; Battletech: Operation Little Hammer. Though as TEN players showed up, it wasn't so much a "Little" game after all. The planned scenario was expanded, and a full 35 'mechs took to the field of battle in a massive brawl.  I was placed in command of a Steiner "Recon" lance, including a Rakshasa, a Hercules and a Maelstrom. Typically, I forget what the fourth 'mech was. Despite being all 75 tonners, I was the lightweight on the field. Thanks to some fortunate initiatives and the ridiculous luck of my dice brought about by my wife, I was able to cap four enemy 'mechs, including the first and second kills, and was elected MVP of the victorious Steiner assault force. As has been said on Solaris: "Not bad for a rookie!"  By this time, it was after midnight and I headed home for a night of not getting any sleep...

Saturday dawned bright and early for me... On Friday.  So, Saturday felt a little like the longest day.  Still, it was a good time!  Dashing in at something like 1:58pm, I made my spot for Ogre - good thing too, as I was bringing terrain for it.  The game was a Combine assault on Pan-Euro defending forces.  Without going into a deep breakdown of tactical choices and such, I will say that I managed to win (again, with astonishingly lucky dice rolls) mostly due to being able to concentrate my Ogre III-B with my wife's III-B in one spot and ruin the enemy as they came at us one by one. Two III-Bs firing at a regular model III can really ruin it's day, and we stripped the enemy III and the Fencer of all weapons in one turn each. 

Following game cleanup and a trip to the dealer's room... Again... (whereby I came out with a cheap copy of the Fiend Folio, two FASA-era Battletech source books, some minis and a couple pieces of terrain) Myself, my wife and three fellow Grognards made their way to a little Columbian place a block away from the convention for a real sit-down dinner... It was AMAZING.  I think the place is called "Casa del Pollo", and damn. My recommendation is if you go to Dexcon, you MUST go there at least once during the weekend for food. Seriously.

With full bellies and a song in our hearts we returned to the con for the last game of the day (and, for a few of us, for the con). The game was White Plume Mountain, run by the Greyhawk Grognard.  Now, while we didn't manage to get too terribly far through the mountain, we did manage to avoid being completely destroyed. The group was good, but I think fatigue helped make a few of us less than imaginative when coming up with solutions to problems.  Thus, with one party member sadly deceased, and only a minor haul of gold, electrum, gems and what we suspect was magic chainmail, we made our way from the mountain to end the game.


Overall, I had a fantastic time and I am sure as eggs are eggs that I'll be going back again next year.  With all the positive feedback that all the "old-school" games I was in got I'm sure the OSR in general will be back in force, too.  I have tentative plans to run a few games myself, but it's a year away, so let's not get counting chickens just yet.

Armies of Greyhawk 9 - Onnwal.

Gentlemen and Ladies! Please be upstanding for the newest of the Armies of Greyhawk project army lists. Today's subject is Onnwal. I wish you happy gaming and good luck with all those dice rolls!

Coming soon are the forces of Irongate and the Iron Hills.

Armies of Onnwal (.ods file, downloads from Mediafire. Onnwal1.0.90.ods).

Armies of Greyhawk 8 - North Province.

Huzzah and yay, it's time for another of the AoG posts. About time, I know. So, here we have details for the forces of the North Province. Up next will be Onnwal, and Irongate soon after that.

Incidentally - I've noticed there's been a spew of blogs going offline lately, including the most excellent Axe n Hammer blog . If anyone has any information or insight into that, I'd be most grateful for a mail (silent(spam)silver(spam)hawk(spam)@googlemail.spam.com) or comment. And yes, you'll have to remove the appropriate cans of spam from that to make it work.

Armies of the North Province (.ods file, downloads from Mediafire. NorthProv1.0.90.ods).

Female Armour?

In honour of my lovely wife's recent addiction to playing angry fighters:



"AIM FOR THE SHINY PART!"

Armies of Greyhawk - Commanders.

Someone asked me, "what about fortified camps and commanders for the lists?".  To begin with, all the fortified camps and commanders cost the same amount across all the various army lists so that takes the decision out of my hands, as, frankly, I've tried to stick with their own formula for costing troops, therefore their values are fine with me. A player familar with Field of Glory (the system for which the Armies of Greyhawk lists are built) and in possession of any of the source books will see the exact same options for the Fortified Camp and the commanders in the various officially published army lists.  I didn't think it was necessary to include the commanders and Fortified Camp options in every list, as they're universal across all of them.  I also didn't feel that it was really in my purview to dictate which armies could or could not have a Fortified Camp - I would rather leave the option to each individual player and each particular scenario that they wish to partake.

However, I suppose I should include something here just as a self-important indication of how I personally add command and camps to my lists. That and in the hope of converting a few more players to the Field of Glory/Armies of Greyhawk fold.

C-in-C
Inspired Commander / Field Commander / Troop Commander      -   80/50/35 points 

Sub Commanders:
0-2    Field Commander       -    50 points
0-3    Troop Commander     -    35 points

0-1    Fortified camp             -    24 points.

Armies of Greyhawk 7 - Sunndi

Hooray! It's time to get posted another list in the increasingly famous (SEVEN! Count them, an average of seven downloads each!) Armies of Greyhawk series.  Thank you all for the support and links and continued interest in these things! Anyway, before I go off on a tangent that really should be covered in it's own post, let's get to posting that list.






Armies of the County of Sunndi (.ods file, downloads from Mediafire. Sunndi1.0.90.ods).

Armies of Greyhawk 6 - Idee.

Still trying to make up for the terrible lack of updates for the past few weeks, herein you'll now will find a bonus update!  Please to be finding yourself the most glorious order of battle for the forces of Idee, being the latest update to the developing Armies of Greyhawk - Field of Glory project. Coming up next time is the County of Sunndi.

Armies of Idee (.ods file, downloads from Mediafire.  Idee1.0.90.ods ).

Armies of Greyhawk 5 - Almor.

Finally, after many weeks of frustration without my computer, I can release the latest in the Armies of Greyhawk series. Today, I present the forces of Almor for your edification. Over the next week or two I'll be adding a couple of extra army lists, Idee and Sunndi among them, to make up for the dry spell.  Sit tight, we'll get there in the end!

Armies of Almor (.ods file, downloads from Mediafire.  Almor1.0.90.ods ).

Caroline, oh Caroline!

She's finished! Eeee! The pink Fencer, after deciding on her name of Caroline, is ready to destroy those dirty, horrible, science-hating Combine forces!  She's thoroughly gorgeous and she'll overrun anyone that says otherwise. I panicked somewhat when I first added the black lining after the basecoat, but thankfully (I think) the topcoat went on quite nicely and covered the fact that it looked bloody awful at that time.  Paint covers a multitude of sins, thank goodness!


You'll also see, in the background of Caroline's glamour shot, the beginnings of my Royal Household Pan-European forces. Slow progress, I will admit, but I'm quite pleased with the results of the first few units.  Hooray me and hooray black ink!


Okay then. In addition to Caroline, the pink Fencer of DOOM, and the Pan-Euros, I've been working on some bases of trees. Below is a picture of my box'o'trees.  It's not quite hundreds, but it'll cover enough to be getting on with. Roughly twice that number again and I'll be done! Simples!

Yay pictures!

Also, my power supply and new PC components are in the mail, so fingers crossed they'll arrive by the weekend and I can resurrect the Armies of Greyhawk series. I haven't forgotten and those lists are still coming!

ADD, the mad way.

Today, I had the pleasure of running a game of Joe Bloch's excellent Adventures Dark and Deep for a few regulars of another campaign that had to take a week off due to someone apparently having more fun at a convention. Hmph! In keeping with the grand tradition of such things, I feel somewhat obligated to make a campaign post about it.

Present were Nikole, human fighter; Albert Finkle, human mountebank; Kanick, dwarf thief and Rannos, human Cleric.  The game took place in a mysterious underground 'sporting' dungeon hall that a mad tyrant once maintained in the Flinty Hills to torture and abuse his enemies and random victims. The mad tyrant in question?  Duke Monty.  Yes, they were taking a trip to Monty's Halls. I think that really set the tone for the evening.

Venturing down, the sorted a marching order and at first began with some exploration of passageways and an empty room manned only by an robed and cheerful figure. Welcoming them to "his home", he invited them to "make themselves..." before the enchantment binding it failed, leaving them none the wiser of his intent. Undeterred, the brave engineers adventurers took to unscrewing and removing doors from their hinges one by one. A second room, apparently a cloak room came and went without incident, although the mysterious cloakroom attendant did make off with the Cleric's hat.

Onward, through yet more exploration (and mapping, which would prove costly to their sanity soon enough!) the bold party discovered a room with a series of chalk marks, laid out in a pentagram. Bad news, they thought, particularly as the reek of sulphur hung heavily in the air. Still, the mad little Dwarf thought to break the circle, to which responded an almighty BOOOOM!  Oh dear they thought, there goes another innocent town.  Out again, and soon the party began to become confused.

Mapping broke down at this point, or at least the mapper broke down after a trip through an endless passageway led them to traveling in impossible circles for a good while. Finally, they twigged the problem, found the track back and chose another path. In the next chamber, the party had an amusing conversation with a talking statue, who kindly assisted them in reclaiming a large cache of silver pieces, added to a nice find of jewelry, though not until after a nasty scuffle with a pair of Displacer Beasts, both of which were ultimately dispatched by consummate ease by the fighter's mighty longsword.

Their searching led them to discovering a lair of Ogres... At least after they rigged a clever system to open the latched doorway that tragically backfired, resulting in the cunning mountebank's face suffering a nasty encounter with a rapidly opening door.  The battle, however, was brought quickly under the party's control, and all the beasts were dispatched. A thorough search (other than the offal pile, at least) brought forth more monetary rewards in the form of several hundred gold pieces hoarded away in a crate.

Bolstered by the find (though not by the heat of the AC-less game store) they took off again only to stumble into a chute that seemingly led them deeper into the bowels of the lair. Following their brave cleric's lead, the party all took the trip. It wasn't until more mapping and the clue provided by the dwarf thief's 'fixing' of the chalk pentagram with added flower designs that they discovered the chute had deposited them on the very same level! Many colourful curses later and they found their last encounter of note - another talking statue.

The statue began with a seemingly random barrage of nonsense words.

"Friends! Ventured most frobulently forth, 

scoobus nikto in my largest bloo!

Flip tickle mook nobby!

Tick tock, tick tock!"

Bewildered, the smart-mouth dwarf retorted "when the walls fell." Sadly for the party, the statue was much less amused by the reply than the players were, and spewed forth an unpleasant burst of acid.

At this point, it was late and were all somewhat fatigued, so we called it a night.  It wasn't a terribly intricate setup on my part, but a good old fashioned (if somewhat bizarre and twisted) stroll into silliness served to provide everyone with a great time and earned several very kindly received compliments from the players. Including our new to tabletop gaming fighter, who wanted to know how we could play remotely just so she could come back. For those words, guys, thank you! I realise I was worried about how it'd run, particularly so given the massively high bar our regular DM (Joe) sets, so it meant a lot to get that. 

The game was a pleasure to run, and seemingly a pleasure to play in too... Still, I'm looking forward to getting back to digging through the Mad Archmage's cellars some more. :)

Sometimes, I swear...

...things pile up against me.

I know it sounds silly but right now it feels like a perfectly understandable paranoia!

A few days ago, Mediafire was having issues with cooperating with Firefox (pretty much any version from 3.x and up). This coincided with my having finished off a couple (well, four) overdue Armies of Greyhawk lists. All typed and ready to go they were (are!), but no uploading meant I decided to just leave off posting until the next day. That night, the PSU for my computer imploded.

So now I'm currently awaiting receipt of the next one to be installed into the beast and typing this up on a spare with so little grunt that I doubt it would actually be able to power the painting lamp that is sitting next to me. I -could- tear out the HDD from that one and attach it up to this one if I really felt so inclined, but instead I'm taking the time to clean up and prime more of the 'Mechs I got from my Battletech starter boxes. And paint a pink Fencer (yes, I said pink). And base some more trees.  Oh, and finish proof-reading v1.0 of the Adventures Dark and Deep Game Master's Toolkit.

Sure, I appreciate the time to paint, but I think I'll feel a little more relaxed when I get those new AoG lists posted like I said I would... At this rate I'll actually -finish- painting the Fencer AND have taken pictures -before- I get the parts for the new computer. Astonishing!