Circle of Dar Janix

It has been a busy week or so around here. I am in crunch time to get a legal brief written and I am putting the finishing touches on the start of my OSRIC campaign. Good stuff is on the way though. Two weeks ago I played in a Pathfinder game and I will be sitting in on another session this Saturday. There will be recaps of those two games going up soon. After the Pathfinder game, at 6 PM, I finally kick off my OSRIC game. Stonhell awaits! I also confirmed that I will be staying with the Podgecast boys at GenCon this year. I had a blast last year and cannot wait to do it all again.

I would love to see what an adventure with any of these names would be like (in easy to use d100 form) 1. Last Train to London 2. In the Hall of the Mountain King 3. Welcome to My Nightmare 4. Heart of Glass 5. The Bringer of Old Age 6. Jungleland 7. Darkness on the Edge of Town (Hey, I am from NJ) 8. The Man Who Sold the World 9. Child in Time 10.Spanish Caravan 11.Soldiers of the Wastelands 12.Burn Down the Mission 13.The Ecstasy of Gold 14. Gabriel's Oboe 15.Wanderers from Ys 16.Castles Made of Sand 17.Vanishing World 18.Walking the Path of Legend 19.The Ancient City Surfaces 20.Collapse of the Ark Napishtim 21.Scenes From a Night's Dream 22.Duke's Travels 23.Land of Confusion 24.Firth of Fith 25.In the Cage 26.Los Endos 27.Watcher of the Skies 28.Dance on a Volcano 29.Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea 30.Dark Horse 31.Rocket Queen 32.The Lonely Bull 33.2 Minutes to Midnight 34.Can I Play With Madness 35.The Evil That Men Do 36.Duel of the Fates 37.Electric Eye 38....

I got way behind on these reviews so the next few will just be quick thoughts so I can get caught up to the present. I love the Arudin Trilogy picture on page 8. I don't know exactly what Arudin is, I gather it is pretty wild and gonzo, but you had me at "busty elf decapitates lizardman." I like Hook-Hand Jack, he is my kind of creepy NPC. The "House of the Axe" by Calithena is a pretty cool adventure. I really like how the ghost is handled and the apartment level. If I use it, I will probably just use the house parts though. Personally, I think all the dungeon crawling in the basement levels will lessen the haunted house feel. They are well done though. I am probably going to use "Random Rooms" by Michael Curtis to flesh out my sub-level for Stonehell. I have some stuff I want to work in fairly early. I'd like to stick with the whole random/megadungeon spirit where I can. "Home Remedies for Common Dungeon Ailments", "Carousing Misha...

Tim at Gothridge Manor wrote about his blogging habits , how he goes about commenting, reading etc. I use Google Reader. According to Reader I subscribe to 106 blogs, all of them are RPG or video game related. Most of them are pen and paper RPG blogs. I rarely comment on blogs. I don't really know what to say most of the time. When I do comment I use Cocomment to track responses to the comments. I find this tool to be very helpful. I don't have to remember what blogs I commented on to follow the conversation. I only found out about it a few weeks ago, perhaps I will comment more now that I have a way to track it. I am a creature of habit when it comes to blog reading. Every day I scroll to 1Up's Retronauts Blog , Grognardia , and West Karana first to see if there are new posts. Then I bounce around to see what else catches my eye until I have read the all the posts. I usually read all the posts for the day. There are some exceptions, I usually skim monster, spell, and magic...

As I gathered my resources for my OSRIC game I couldn't help but notice something. There are only two books, both out of print, by a major publisher. The City State book is by Sword and Sorcery, I am pretty sure they are White Wolf. The Gygax Names book is by Troll Lord and I am not even sure they qualify as a major publisher. The setting is coming from Goodman Games, some of their stuff is available in B&N so I guess they could be major. But, Points of Light II is written by Rob Conley so it keeps its small community cred as far as I am concerned. Everything else is self published in some fashion. Written by people whose blogs I read. I get a lot of use out of the Names book, so it was hardly purchased for this campaign. The City State book has been sitting on my shelf for years, I just saw a chance to use it (maybe, if needed). So every single dollar, minus printing costs, spent on this game went right back into the gaming community. Those dollars stayed in gaming. They didn...

Sir Kevin decided to follow the unicorn as it fled the goblin hut. He quickly lost sight of it in the forest though. It wasn't long before he realized that he was lost and it was getting dark. He decided to rest on a log while he got his bearings. Once he sat down he started feeling very sleepy. He managed to jerk himself awake and find a strange little man dressed in green nearby. "Who are you?" "I am a leprechaun, and I want to make a deal with you." "What is the deal?" "I will tell you where to find my pot of gold, if you will dig it up for me. You can have all the gold in it, I just need the pot." "Why can't you dig it up?" "An evil witch put a curse on me." "We should kill the witch." "I am afraid she is long gone. I have had this curse for 100 years." "That is horrible. I will help you get your pot back." "Very good. Just follow this path to the bridge, cross the river, and dig ...

With my OSRIC campaign starting in just a little more than two weeks, it is time to nail down what will be in from day 1. Rule Set: OSRIC. I think that for the group I will be playing with this is the best rule set. They have all played 3.x and have come to expect a certain level of complexity. This will let me keep that while being much easier for me to run. It also gives me a lot more room to mod the game than 3.x does, I can tailor it to this group. XP for gold and exploration will be the primary advancement mechanisms. The Group: Looks like I will have 4 players. I have, to some extent, played with all of them before (maybe not 1). One member is part of my original gaming group and we go back to middle school and Mentzer. His wife will also be playing with us, she played in at least one of my 3.5 Monster Feature games (I think the one with the Kraken). I played with the other male player in a Shadowrun game last year and I think his wife also played in it. It is possible I met her ...