RPG (every 10 or so) days

It's a thing -> http://autocratik.com/media/img/rpg-a-day.jpg
But, I can't be arsed to write 31 individual blog posts. You get them in several mass ramblings!

22nd - Best Secondhand RPG Purchase

80% of my RPGs are from Ebay, Half Price Books and used sections at game stores. 

23rd - Coolest looking RPG product / book

Star Trek Tricorder/Sensors interactive display

24th - Most Complicated RPG Owned

FFG Warhammer. So many fiddly bits, I can't be arsed to figure it out and no one knows it to teach me.

25th - Favorite RPG no one else wants to play

Rolemaster

26th - Coolest character sheet

27th - Game you'd like to see a new / improved edition of

FGU - Space Opera

28th - Scariest Game you've played

Aliens

29th - Most memorable encounter

Januc - The Cajun Swamp Ogre

30th - Rarest RPG Owned

who cares

31st - Favorite RPG of all time

Swords and Wizardry. Old school in one book, formatted and laid out nicely, and heavily supported.

RPG (every 10 or so) days

It's a thing -> http://autocratik.com/media/img/rpg-a-day.jpg
But, I can't be arsed to write 31 individual blog posts. You get them in several mass ramblings!

12th - Old Rpg you still play / read

Most the RPGs I play are old (or retro-clones of old games). OD&D. Swords & Wizardry, Labyrinth Lord, I hope to be playing Metamorphosis Alpha when the kickstarter ships.

13th - Most Memorable Character Death

A dwarf defending fort till his death against Giants and humanoids while the civilians escape through escape tunnel. College game run by History Major.  It was keen.

14th - Best Convention Purchase

Artist Panel Art from North Texas RPG Con

15th - Favorite Convention Game

Caves of Chaos (mash-up of D&D B2 and Hackmaster B2) which I've run at various conventions.

16th - Game  you wish you owned

Until they started re-releasing all the OOP print stuff I wish I owned D&D.  Wish I had the rights to reprint / make computer versions of all the old SPI and AH wargames. Although, I don't think question meant "Own the copyright to". I kind of own all the games I want, except some which are collector's items and ridiculously riced. I kind of with I still had the print copies of all the ICE Middle Earth modules.

17th - Funniest Game you've played

Paranoia

18th - Favorite Game System

I like different systems for different styles of play. Something simple, light OD&D, Swords and Wizardry for sandbox / exploration play. For the more heroic / story driven games I'm really digging FFG's Age of Rebellion. Thinking about Conan conversion of it's mechanics.

Art / Flavor wise Dungeon Crawl Classics is close tie with Lamentations of the Flame Princess.

19th - Favorite Published Adventure

B2 Keep on the Borderlands my first module ever, so great and flexible. I've done a lot with it.

S3 Expedition to the Barrier Peaks top of my short lest of classic modules I still need to run. Sci-Fantasy loves it.

T1-4 Temple of Elemental Evil Center point of one of my most successful campaigns. Love the ToEE computer game.

Barrowmaze Dripping with flavor and unique dungeon layout.

20th - Will still play in 20 years time...

Everything I'm playing today. I'll be 64!

21st - Favorite Licensed RPG

Licensed games generally blow.  FFG's Age of Empire is decent. So was Firefly RPG if I remember correctly.

RPG (every 10 or so) days

It's a thing -> http://autocratik.com/media/img/rpg-a-day.jpg
But, I can't be arsed to write 31 individual blog posts. You get them in several mass ramblings!

#1 First RPG Played

First solo play was Moldvay D&D Basic Set around 11-12 years old. Freakin captured my imagination. Really has dominated my life for next 30 years. RPGs have been and continue to be my #1 creative outlet.  I've spent more of my time, money, and life on them than just about anything else. I think the main draw (and I'm primarily a DM) for me is the creation and control of "worlds and characters". It's not as hard as writing a novel, or as expensive/complex as producing a movie or requiring talent needed to paint but has creative aspects of all of those. It can be as private as staying up all night in your basement keying the dungeon map you drew, or as social as playing games with strangers at the FLGS. It can be done with nothing more than pencils and paper (or even just rocks and sticks). Or with ridiculously large amount of "bits".

I think the first game I played with other people was AD&D in high school.

#2 First RPG Refereed

Rolemaster in college. Finally got 3 people interested in something other than D&D. It lasted 2 sessions. While I may still not be a good Ref, I was much, much worse then.

#3 First RPG Purchased

The Little Brown Books in a White Box from forgotten hobby shop in Falls Church, VA.Tagging along with dad when he'd get model railroad stuff.  Around this time I also spent my allowance on a subscription to Dragon Magazine, this was issues 80's or 70's . That was freaking awesome. Every month a brown paper wrapped parcel of RPG stuff.

#4 Most recent RPG purchase

Currently contributed to several (too many) Kickstarters that have yet to fund / deliver. Arguably these are purchases from the future.

DCC Purple PlanetNecromancer Games 

5ed Monsters and Stuff 

Metamorphosis Alpha (next year's winner for #5 Most Old School RPG owned) 

CSIO maps baby! 

Dwarvenite Caves and Caverns 

Blue Dungeon Tiles 

Bones II

Di I mention up in #1 about spending too much money on games...

Most recent from the FLGS (wave Mage's Sanctum) RPG (I buy regular games too much too) purchase was FATE Core.

Most recent EBay win: Bunch of Ravenloft Guides to .... 

#5 Most Old School RPG owned

I prefer old school, so most my games are old school. Empire of the Petal Throne wins. For being actually old, old school in play, and not retro-cloned (to my knowledge). Although, Jeff Dee and friends are working on something like that.

Honorable mention goes to The Traveller Book. The only RPG I'm aware of in which your character can die during creation.

#6 Favorite RPG Never get to play

Ars Magica I never have played and can't be sure it's my favorite. I really, really want to find out though. 

Definitely my favorite never get to play RPG is Rolemaster / MERP / HARP and derivatives. 

#7 Most "intellectual" RPG owned

I've thrown away any of those I've accidentally acquired.

#8 Favorite character

I don't really keep characters for long or recycle them. As a player I tend to get the DMing itch and leave campaigns before too long.  I like this guy, an NPC  Pilger, Dwarven Priest of Horm

#9 Favorite Die / Dice Set

d30 OF COURSE.  Btw I picked up New Big Dragon Games d30 Companions at this years North Texas RPG Con and recommend them highly.

#10 Favorite tie-in Novel / Game Fiction

I friggin hate companies (i.e. White Wolf) and products (i.e. everything White Wolf has published) that combine 1/2 bad fiction with 1/2 bad RPG supplement. That being said a couple book -> games I've not hated are Jack Vance's / Dying Earth RPG and Robert Jordan / Wheel of Time RPG.

P.s. Dragonlance RPG stuff blows.

#11 Weirdest RPG owned

I have hundreds... and what's weird? If I had that diceless RPG Amber? I'd definitely call it weird. If I didn't dislike indie scenester games with all their cleverness and intellectualism, some of them are definitely weird. 

Macho Women with Machine Guns is nominally "weird" for those unfamiliar with the films of Russ Meyer.

Fudge / Fate has weird (relative to polyhedrals) dice.

Some of the Fantasy Games Unlimited RPGs have weirdly impenetrable rules.

My Least Favorite Edition of D&D

[Using a broad definition of D&D to include all editions, retro-clones, etc.]

I started with the blue dragon, had the white box LBB, but really grew up on AD&D Efreeti and Gem Eyes.   Played some in highschool and college. Then 2ed splat mania + too many crap products + (in retrospect) the shift in style, structure, and substance of those products as compared to 1ed era drove me from D&D (into other RPGs).

Time passes...

I returned to D&D a little after 3.5 release.  I've since run and played enough of OD&D(Swords & Wizardry), Basic(Labyrinth Lord), AD&D(OSRIC), 3.5, and 4ed to arrive at the following opinion.

AD&D including (and even more so) 2ed is my least favorite edition of D&D to run/play.  This was news to me as it's the edition I've played and run the most.  The DMG is still a good resource and many of the classic modules I'll try to weave into campaigns.  But, I won't be using AD&D rules to run them.

AD&D and it's clones are just so horribly fiddly, filled with wildly inconsistent levels of simulation and detail.  Baroque were simple would suffice, vague or abstract were a little more is needed.  Too many "broken" classes, combos and rules. It's the shored up, chronically patched half-way house between the wild and loose "earlier" systems and the mechanistic edifices to game theory of later editions.

There's a reason we have sayings along the lines of "right tool for the right job", "do one thing and do it well", "don't try to be all things to all people".  It's cause of people like me.

I enjoy the ends of the spectrum. Where games, successful or not at getting there, at least know what they want to be. Sometimes I crave a fine dark chocolate. Sometimes an oily, 100% natural nut butter, the type that requires stirring. But, my desire for a waxy chocolate covered peanut like fudge thing is quite low.

Sorry, dudes.

Happy Birthday Dungeon

My good gamer buddy's wonderful wife recruited me to help with surprise birthday party.  Amongst the giant inflatable dice, mini stuffed egg hunt, I drew this on 1" graph paper.

I am 40

I was born on this date.

I'm a 40yr old nerd and proud (overly so I'm sure) of it.  I have a great job, recently promoted to Director of Server Development, boo yah!  I own a house, share it with my demon dog!  At my awesome birthday party the Piñata was filled with D&D mini's.

Rock Out the New Year!

15 Games with Annotations

"I rarely participate in these blogosphere trends (mainly because I tend to come to them too late), but here are the fifteen most meaningful games to me, not necessarily in order.  I've provided a little explanation for some of them, as well:"
From the Sorcerer's Skull

Well I'm a blogwhore and jump on any meme, even ones I read about tangentially and aren't even sure exist ;)

1. D&D - Blue Box!  Norm's first RPG ever, nuff said.

2. Rolemaster - When 2ed and TSR's money grubbing, splatbook whorring ways became apparent to me I fled D&D.  And fell into Rolemaster's warm embrace.  (the warmth was from the 4/hits round of bleeding I suffered from the Fall/Crush 'C' critical I had received)

3. FUDGE - The messiah that wasn't.

4. ICE MERP - Middle Earth Roleplaying. I had most if not all of the 1st ed supplements.  Showed me how bad ass a wilderness map could be.  Gave me interest in Flora and Fauna, Herbs and Poison tables. Taught me everything I knew about Middle Earth before the movies came out.  And sold along with MTG cards funded a 9mo bike trip around Europe.

5. ToEE PC game (and module, one of my most successful campaigns. Lareth the Beautiful most fab villain ever).  The game that brought me back to D&D (3.5).

6. D&D 3.5 - Taught me exactly what I like as a DM and a gamer (it's not 3.5)

7. Arduin - Arrived very late here.  The Parlament Funkadelic of RPGs.

8. Go - subtlety, sacrifice, the whole, humility.

9. SPI's War of the Ring - My first (of very many) paper chit and hex wargames.  Wow, just realized this is probably the only item I've managed to retain from before age 14, certainly the only game.

10. Star Castle - Arcade video game, the first I ever played.

11. MTG CCG - Learned very much about game mechanics/theory.

12. Settlers of Catan - My first (of very many) modern/adult/euro style board games.

13. Traveller RPG - Space; it's really, really big and still you can't get away from "Hard" Sci-fi dweebs.

14. Labyrinth Lord - The game I most want to play, and by play I mean houserule beyond all recognition.

15. "Basic Computer Games" - Start of my tech career which has given me joy, stress, bad posture, pale skin and best of all; time and the money to play all the games I want.

October Gaming

One of Austin's local game groups usual meeting place a FLGS closed it's doors a couple months ago.  So, we've been playing at my house.  Yesterday's session was the first in my new (since move) "Game Room".   Here's some pics of our 1st/2nd AD&D action.  If you're in Austin, TX area and want to game (of anytype)  get in touch, I probably know where/who to go for that.

Frogs! Slimy, bulging eyed frogs. Love'm. Their watery lair was packed with loot.

Maybe I should have had everyone smile/look excited before pic, eh? :)

Teamwork! Thief goes onboard ship, everyone else stands as far away as is physically possible.

Our illustrious GM, actually everyone in that pic GMs now and then.
See that big ass grin, that's cause his frogs be chomping up our party:( 

Anniversary Post

It's hard to tell cause not all my posts are RPG related and I have a dozen half completed posts in draft and I'm too lazy to figure it out.  But, sometime soon or recently [been procrastinating finishing this post, think I'm at 215-220 mark now] Troll and Flame passed the 200th post mark. Big deal.


I'm not a fan of anniversaries, perhaps this is related to my denial of time and avoidance of mortality.  But, a comment I wrote somewhere made me realize there are reasons I started and continue to blog.  I'd like to call a few out and thank them.


I started this Troll and Flame for three reasons, in order; 1) I'd been reading the OSR and other RPG blogs for a while and was getting so many ideas and resources I wanted to contribute back.  By adding my own ideas to the mix both in comments and on this blog.  Also, spreading awareness of and driving readers to other blogs/resources.  Sharing the awesomeness.  2) I've always needed an outlet for my creativity.  Blogging fits the bill nicely. 3) I'm a vain, attention whore.

That was enough to get going but the fuel that has sustained me is the wonderful community of RPG bloggers I'm part of.

 Early on Zack Houghton of www.rpgblog2.com offered to swap guest posts with me.  It was a small thing but really made feel welcomed and encouraged to continue. Thanks Zack!  I've recently offered guest post swapping to a new blogger I know.  [Also, if anyone wants to swap posts you can email me, I'm totally up for it.]

Jeff's Gameblog was one of the first blogs I found and it encouraged me to start blogging. Actually, it encouraged my adoption of a whole new gamer attitude. Locking away the "serious, analytical, everything must be perfect in my campaign anal norm" and unleashing the "holy crap yes, I will run that without any prep and it will be flippin rad, monkey norm!"  [I dump such crazed adulations on you, you're probably thinking I'm some psycho stalker.]  My best friend, also named Jeff, cracked my head open and you've continued his mental expansion work.  You two are the Buddhas who brought me enlightenment. Thanks.



The Lair of The Evil DM another early blog I followed and among the blogs that made me want to contribute back more than just comments.  The Lair's mix of  softcore and dress up mandolls posts* encouraged me to write Troll and Flame "as norm", rather than attempting to create a more acceptable/mainstream norm.  Thanks Most Evil One.
* Plenty of other types of posts as well. Just, those where the ones that made me think "holy hotness, what does this have to do with rpgs" / "haha what a dork, grown man playing with dolls"** and that I'd never have that stuff on my blog.  But then "fuck it".  The Evil DM doesn't give a shit what I think about his porn and mandolls why should I give a shit about what others think about my cussing and dorkery.
** A bit of creative license, greatly exaggerating and twisting my thoughts. Your action figures are rad and adults who don't play with toys suck.  And I shouldn't talk shit being the owner of several stuffed animals.


[A "My Advice to Bloggers" aside: In retrospect that, being norm, has been key for lasting over 200 posts.  At times your audience will be non-existent or piss you off and you'll loose the desire to continue.  To last, write for yourself not an audience.   Write what you want, when you want, how you want.  Internet big place, an audience will find you as long as you are true to yourself.]



ChattyDM Thanks for being my first comment!

Sham aka Dave Thanks for being my second comment!
JB Wow, I hadn't realized you've been reading for so long. Thanks!

Grognardia You might disagree and I'd wager you'd prefer it not to be, but, you are a leader of a community of blogs. Thanks for being a good one. And thanks for having a blog roll which started me on this adventure.

There are many others to thank... Daily I read blogs that blow my mind, spark my imagination, and drive me to continue blogging.  I owe a debt of gratitude to all of you, the bloggers in my roll. Thanks. You people are driving me mad with ideas!

Happy Appropriated Pagan Holidays!!!

May your Saturnalia celebrations include a little bit of that old-school tomfoolery.

RPGs I desperately want to play

The Philippine Gamer posted a list of RPGs he hasn't played but desperately wants too. Sounded like a good idea.


Games I should or will own if they ever get freakin released

Shard - been waiting for it to be released. I guess I played it, but game store demos don't count. Do they?

Mutant Future - obvious choice ;) I'd also like to run a Spaceship Warden campaign.

Anyting run by various OSR bloggers whose game session reports I read with jealousy.


Games I actually own.

Labyrinth Lord / BECMI - This one is easy to achieve I just need to show up to the Sunday game at Dragon's Lair.

Star Frontiers - I've had this since it was originally released. NEVER played it. So sad.

Traveller - Mongoose pocket edition. Sanbox style. Actually thought bout doing Star Flight / Ur-Quan masters type of campaign.

HARP - and/or Cyberspace and/or Spacemaster, been a fan of Rolemaster since highschool. Actually played a little in college. Can be cool if you view it as a bunch of houserules to be used to construct a game system.

Ars Magica - Oh please! But will never happen. Great ideas on entourage play, non-balanced characters, coven(domain/kingdom) creation/management, and magic. Oh lord! The magic, it is soooo awesome.

Nephelim - another oh please / never will happen. I got a fair amount of supplements neat stuff for use in other games.

Hidden Invasion - I don't know buttkiss about the mechanics TriTac? But it says "Fantastic Science Fiction Role Playing" and "High Adventure Across the Galaxy" on the cover so I bought it, for $5.00! Premise goes like this "You and other random people (aka the party) get abducted by 50's era flying saucer. You all break loose, fight, kill your abductors and take over the ship. Rest of game is flying around the galaxy doing cool shit with your UFO saucer and other rad alien technology.

HackMaster Basic - "desperate to play" might be pusing it. Probably will happen when I get some time and can run a 1-shot at the FLGS.

Oriental Adventures - AD&D. But really any fantasy, 1970'sish, kung-fu action game will do, I have a couple. Is "Ruins and Ronin" an actual thing or just a plan?

My Fiction Foundation

Unlike many (older) RPG bloggers my youth wasn't filled with fantasy books. The Hobbit was the only one I can think of. Wanting to "duplicate" that book was why I got into D&D. Maybe trying to read The War of the Ring turned me off fantasy (Sorry, those books really just suck). I basically quit reading novel fantasy when I started reading RPG modules and making my own fantasy. [Oh, I read The Witch, The Lion and The Wardrobe and probably several forgotten others.] I mostly remember sci-fi, Asimov Foundation trilogy and "robot" books, various double sided sci-fi's I found on dad's bookshelf. The man who Japed [holy cow that's a PKD! don't remember it one bit, just the cover of course], bunch of Kurt Vonnegut in later teens. And I didn't really read all that much of them either. Still haven't read 90% of the DMG's Appedix N. Although they're high, esp Vance, on my list for next time I get the reading bug.



I watched but don't feel that influenced by Saturday Morning cartoons such as Thundar, Thunder Cats, Masters of The Universe, and esp GI Joe which I absolutely hated! Even back then I knew no character death was fail. Instead I spent my Saturdays watching Kung-fu Theater and the rest of the time day-dreaming about wearing double breasted outfits with the fold up sleeves and jumping through the air! Asian fantasy has held me ever since. I even prefer Hong Kong cop & yakuza over cop & robber genre. Oriental Adventures is the one 1e book I never sold/lost/gave away (I since repurchased a DMG for nostalgia/reference). Sadly I've never found another gamer who has the same love as I. Just hordes of BESM and anime fanboys that are so not like minded fools.


My other major TV influences were more Sci-Fi. Dr Who, Star Trek TOS, Battlestar Galactica (good version), and Carl Sagan's Cosmos. Huh, non-fiction Cosmos? I joyously blame Cosmos for instilling in me the desire to learn, to ask why and to revel in the awesomeness of knowledge. All of which I've found indispensable in life and DMing. Less joyously for solidifying my analytical, simulist gamer attitude which I've been trying to drop recently.


D&D is my fantasy foundation. When I write fantasy I think of it in terms of a D&D adventure, with a party and all the other D&D trappings. Not the other way round.


This post was inspired by this video I happened apon. Not a super great scene, just normal everyday kung-fu. I want to game this scene and a thousand others. I've never found a system that captures this kind of combat. Over the top wushu is easy, Jackie Chan style acrobatics could do in 1/2 dozen systems. But intricate, strike, block, grab, bind escape Kung-fu, no so much.

The Dangers of Gamerdom

Obsessiveness, Ebay, and collectible card games are a combo with some bad mojo.

Hmmmm, Zante Indian Pizza. Damn, I'm really missing San Francisco right now.

Games can draw you in and blind you to the wider world piling up around you. This is a tiny office in the historic Hobart Building situated in downtown SF which a friend (that's his 'puters and double deckered desk on the left) shared and I lived out of. Slept on the floor half under the desk I'm sitting at. I'm probably playing a computer game, maybe Evercrack.

Man, hard to believe I looked that young once.

Phantasmagorical or: my fall towards the Dark Side

I first remember seeing Phantasmagorical used at the RPG Blog Rust Monster Ate My Sword a few days ago. Since then I'm a blogger obsessed. I've (over)used it in various comments, on my own blog and even at work to explain why the server was acting that way. Part of its allure is surely nostalgic* bringing me back to a little boy pouring over his DMG, looking up definitions for all sorts of fantastic new words [D&D really did learn me a lot of vocabulary and history]. It invokes a sorcerous Howard / Lovecraft vibe. It's also just a sexy ass word, Phantasmagorical. I want to play a game that requires this word to explain it. [btw click the image and watch]

I'm by nature a cynical, rational dude. I love to learn, which means I love to seek out how and why everything works. It's very hard for me to accept "that's the way it is" and move on. This massively predisposes me to simulalist game play. In fact, I'm a huge wargame geek, Advanced Squad Leader with its hundreds of pages of rules is pants! Much too late in life it's donning on me that simulation is not actually all that fun. Oh, it's intellectually stimulating, a challenge, enjoyable to figure out and beat, maybe even fun to write the rules. Never Whooo hoooo "Conan fighting a Bear in a canoe going down rapids" fun.

Jeff Rients Blog happened to be my introduction to the Dark Side. I read with envy about his Retro-Stupid shenanigans. He was having Fun. Although, the Mythic Underworld concept of Philotomy's was when I first tasted the True Power of the Dark Side. Since then the whole RPG Blog Community has totally & mischievously lured me further into darkness. Grognardia, The Society of Torch, Pole and Rope, Carcosa, I waste the Buddha with my Crossbow, Lamentatioins of the Flame Princess, World of Thool, just those names thrill me, dripping with Dark they are. There are many others that I've failed to call out, ones I know about are listed in the blog-roll to the right.


So, I scramble headlong into the Dark. To the hidden crevices of imagination where goblins, flumphs, and yes, raygun wielding monkeys dwell, far from rational justification or ecological explanation. Where I'm hunting down Fabulous Norm, long lost amongst Rational Norm's neatly arranged rules.
So, in your meanderings round the nets, if you spy a round little gnome whistling a merry tune and jauntily skipping down the wire then wave, cause that'll be me on my way to Fun-School.



* Some people see nostalgia negatively. Hmmm, looking up the definition -> "longing for something past" is sort of negative. Guess I've had the wrong concept of this word. I meant fondly reminisce past experiences. Something that triggers a good memory, to enjoy for a few moments, then move on with today.

Appdx M: Inspirational Music - Hawkwind

[Whole idea shamelessly stolen from Zeta Orionis] I blogged about Heavy Metal Music and RPG's in the past. Hopefully I'll continue(or start) that theme and not devolve into just "Music Norm Rocks Out To".

Hawkwind

"Too wild and ugly for the rock & roll mainstream"

Watch what Moorcock, yes that Moorcock, has to say about Hawkwind in this 9 part BBC documentary.

Hawkwind; a little space fantasy, a little electro dystopian future, and a lot of drugs. Gets my vote for best Space Rock Band of all time and space. Although, honestly most their lyrics don't do much for me RPGwise. An exception would be Silver Machine -- "It flies sideways through time." Nice bit of recursion in the chorus too. Here it is live:

Also Spirit of the Age

"I am a clone, I am not alone
Every fibre of my flesh and bone is identical to the others
Everything I say is in the same tone
as my test tube brother's voice
There is no choice between us,
If you had ever seen us,
You'd rejoice in your uniqueness
and consider every weakness something special of your own
Being a clone, I have no flaws to identify
Even this doggerel that pours from my pen,
has just been written by another twenty telepathic men,"

It's more their style, the atmosphere their art lives in. Each of these titles is the seed to an adventure:

"Warrior on the Edge of Time"

"The Fifth Second of Forever"

"The Wizard Blew His Horn" - also lyrics

"Kiss of the Velvet Whip"

"Sleep of a Thousand Tears"

"Star Cannibal"

"Wastelands of Sleep"

We Took the Wrong Step Long Ago and lyrics. One would be hard pressed to find a better theme song for a post-apocalyptic or dystopian campaign.


Hawkwind is often far out spacey and trippy.

Listening as I often do while writing up stuff for games I become enthused and filled with ideas. As if some of the copious acid they dropped finds its way into me via their music.


Finally, album covers are sort of a lost art. I could see these giving adolescent Norm the same sorts of thrills and bursts of creativity that early D&D art did such as B1 & B2.

Sham took this "What Fantasy Writer are You" quiz which he found on this blog. It says I'm like some British chick, Mary Gentle. I'm more jazzed that my exact opposite is J K Rowling whom I despise enough she doesn't even get a wiki link. It also says I'm a bit like Sham by way of Gene Wolfe.

11 High-Brow, 27 Violent (higher than 96% of your peers. Ah yeah!), 3 Experimental and 17 Cynical! -- Full Results.

So, I'll jam my Calabash pipe through your eye socket being careful to not get any gore on my tweed jacket, but really, I won't bother cause in the end all action is meaningless.

The Hunt for Gollum

http://thehuntforgollum.com/

Everyone knows about this right?

An outstanding piece of fan made video nicely filling in a gap the Big Screen trilogy glossed over. Extremely well done.

A Trailer

Great Gaping Gaps of Non-Posting

Man, I have new respect for bloggers esp those that churn out multiple posts per day. I'm looking at you Grognardia. But all those bloggers there on the right, damn they're awesome.

Well, haven't posted diddly squat for a long while...

After my vacation in January I fell into a deep depression. It happens. 1d2 times a year. During the bad ones I typically can maintain only one aspect of my life and that just barely. I've been struggling to make that one thing be my "new" job (this month is my 1yr anniversary, yay). So, this blog along with a great many other things fall by the wayside. Depression lasted a month or so. Then I got busy. And blogging is hard. It's a big commitment you have to do it regularly. You have to think up and write article series. You have to create a buffer of pre-written entries for when you're too busy or suffer a mini-depression. And you have to read the multitude of other blogger's blogs. All of that is a big barrier to start up again.

A few weeks ago I started rummaging around my blog roll. Clicking an interesting title here and there, replying with a comment or two, checking up on what my favorite bloggers had been posting (Nice that one page take off, which had just hit the scene when I fell off the horse. Glad that "this is a feeling navel gazing" got put in it's place). As I got back into reading all those blogs I felt that itch again, like I got when I started this blog. The itch to post, to add (and hopefully contribute) to the maelstrom of ideas, opinions, conversation. Desire to post my respects for memorial day put me over the edge.

So, here we go again. No doubt posting will succumb to depression again and there's a great gaping gap in this blogs future. The best I can do is enjoy the ride while it lasts.

Unknown but not Forgotten

Do you hide the fact you play RPG's?

News article that gets under my skin. The condescending tone is irksome but what really pisses me off is people believing they have to hide their hobby from society at large. That's bullshit.

Recently, Jan/Dec, (sorry can't find post) one of the many rpg blogs I read posted on this subject. Many agreed that they would not admit they played RPGs in "polite" company. Many excuses were given, some valid. But ya know what? Unless you come out as a gamer the stereotype and societies ignorance and disdain for our hobby will endure.

Do you enjoy hiding an important part of who you are? Slinking around the internet with pseudonyms always fearful a coworker or friend might discover your "shameful" secret. Personally I couldn't stand it. I've never been "normal" and as a young teenager lost any ambition to fit in or interest in conforming to societies mores. So, my entire life I've always expressed who I am and felt if society doesn't like it then too fucking bad. It's not my responsibility to change or hide who I am. It's society that needs to adapt.

Others have taken different routes and now find themselves with impediments built up all around them. Worry that boss will judge their hobby. Fear friends will laugh at them for playing "child's games". Need to be polite to inlaws even though they're religious nutjobs who would scream Satanist at the mention of D&D. Etc.

I understand. You can't just put on your umber hulk costume and jump out of the closet one day. You aren't free like me to just say "fuck em". It's very hard and worrisome to make that first move. But I implore you to try. It will make the world a better place for everyone.

Geek Pride Bitches