How to Train Your Dragon!

Just took my girls out to see this movie, I've gotta say we had a great time and I enjoyed it.  There's even some inspiration in there for your D&D/Fantasy RPG games.  I particularly enjoyed how the Vikings were portrayed.

Simian Saturday : Gorilla Minis!

 To celebrate Simian Saturday I wanted to mention a new 15mm minis company that has just launched it's web site.    Pole Bitwy
The initial release of minis has a range of giant space apes.

Since apes are supposed to be bigger than us feeble human types they actually scale to about 25mm.  I believe there are plans to expand the ape range further. I can see these definately being useful for Mutant Future games, as well as, tabletop skrimish.

Word Verification Wednesday - Sconk

Sconk (Deadly Stinkers)

No. Enc. : 1d6
Alignment : Neutral
Movement : 120'(40')
Armor Class : 8
Hit Dice : 1
Attacks : 1
Damage : bite (only does 1 pt. of damage)
Save : L1
Morale : 6
Hoard Class : None
Mutations: Toxic Weapon (Class 12; DEATH, save for 1d6 damage)
     Sconks are mutant squirrels that also have many of the traits of a skunk. In most respects they behave like normal squirrels, save when threatened they will unleash a musk attack like a skunk. Unfortunately their musk attack unlike that of a natural skunk can be quite deadly.

     I haven't done a mutant squirrel in awhile, with this week's word verification word I couldn't resist. Also I normally avoid critters and beasties with a save or DIE result/ability, players tend to not like such encounters but I figured in this case it might be worth it. I mean if I saw a squirrel that looked like a skunk I'd get the heck out of dodge. I have a family of skunks living in the hedge row behind my house, I'm very careful when I'm mowing in that part of my yard. -B

Latest Acquisitions...

The mailman was good to me today.  My copies of The Dungeon Alphabet and Barbarians of Lemuria arrived today.  All I can say is WOW, I'd heard all the rave reviews about The Dungeon Alphabet and they were all true, what a great book and only ten bucks!  If you've debated getting this one don't, it is so worth it.
Also I am so far quite pleased with Barbarians of Lemuria (Legendary Edition), it is a great looking system, simple and yet versatile, I haven't read it all the way through yet, but what I have read so far I really like. 
Well off to do some reading!

Resources for Mutant Future (Mutazoids)

I recently acquired this product after hearing mention of it over on the Mutagenic Substance blog. I've gotta tell you this is a Great resource for mutant future or any mutant related campaigns. To play the game as designed you are basically law enforcers keeping the peace against some seriously twisted mutants lurking in the slums of a dark and gritty future.  That's ok, but is not what jumps out at me. Where this game really shines is in it's mutant generation rules.  You can really go to town and roll up some interesting and quite freakish looking mutants. One thing I'd like to see more of in Mutant Future is a greater variety of mutations.  After making several NPC's and mutant beasts I've found the mutations become a bit repetitive.  With this book you can really create alot of individuality in your mutants. 
The book is long OOP but still around in places.  So if you can snag it up for a decent price I highly recommend it.

Planet Algol meets Barbarians of Lemuria

 One of my favorite blogs is Planet Algol I know this has been posted about elsewhere, but I've recently been reading a blog; Bite the Bulette that is running a Planet Algol Campaign and using the Barbarians of Lemuria rules (my copy of BoL should arrive any day now).  Bite the Bulette also has an extra helping of Encounter Critical tossed in, which to me is an added bonus. This makes me even more anxious to check out BoL.  Seems like quite a versatile system.

"He would be only too happy to let you make your decisions for yourselves. But sometimes you might make the wrong decisions, comrades, and then where should we be?"
--George Orwell, Animal Farm

The Vanguard (Movie Resources for Mutant Future)

     Last night when I should have been studying, I instead watched the 2008 Post Apocalyptic/Zombie(?) movie The Vanguard on the Sci Fi channel, I refuse to call the channel by its stupid new name. Thought I'd talk about the movie a bit in my blog.  First off it is clearly a low-budget movie, which is no biggee to me, some of my favorite movies are low budget affairs. I won't go into any spoilers here, suffice that there was a big war (East vs. West or maybe it was West vs. East), the oil has pretty much all been used up and there are these genetic beasties (Zombies?) called Biosyns roving across the countryside, oh and The Corporation is out screwing over everyone (hey that sounds like my company).  The start of the movie has some good scenes and the central character Max is truly viscious with an axe, but after the first arc to the story the movie just seems to go all over the place.  Plot holes are everywhere and several times I just went "huh? did I doze off and miss something cause this makes no sense?"  In spite of this, the movie has a few entertaining moments and you might be able to glean some ideas for Mutant Future or similar grim and gritty P.A./Zombie gaming.  I wouldn't pay big money to see it or for the DVD but you might find something of use to it for a rainy Saturday afternoon viewing.

Simian Saturday

Barbarians of Lemuria

 Whew...It's Friday!  Work and school have been keeping me super busy of late, "The Man" is really taking advantage of the economy, at work we've had our pay basically cut, benefits slashed, responsibilities increased, workload doubled and in some cases tripled and told by the corporate suits "to be grateful we still have jobs" *sigh* I'm am thankful to have a job, but enough is enough! Sorry I'll end my rant here.  Anyways due to all of this my blog has been lacking in updates, and the posts I have done have been somewhat weak on substance.  Unfortunately it will probably be that way for awhile. In gaming news I've been hearing great things about Barbarians of Lemuria.  It's a rules lite RPG system with heavy influence from Lin Carter's Thongor series of pulp coolness.  I ordered the print copy today, it is also available in pdf but I'm an old school book in hand kinda guy.

 The BoL system is hailed as being quite adaptable and there is also a Post Apocalyptic version of the game -system out. Barbarians of the Aftermath

Depending on how well I like Barbarians of Lemuria I will probably be picking this up as well.  It is supposed to allow all kinds of P.A. Campaigns. They also recently released Dogs of War

This is based on the "Men's Adventure" novels from the 80's.  Gotta admit it looks pretty cool.  I'm thinking Dogs of War, combined with Barbarians of the Aftermath could make for some cool game sessions, could even recreate some of the Deathlands adventures from that series of books that I read back in the day.

Word Verification Wednesday - Gonish

Gonish
No. Enc. : 1
Alignment : Neutral
Movement : 150'(50')
Armor Class : 2
Hit Dice : 3
Attacks : 1 (bite)
Damage : 1d8
Save : L2
Morale : 2
Hoard Class : None
Mutations: Fragrance Development, Killing Sphere, Know Direction
     The Gonish is a mutant beast that combines the characteristics of a feline with some form of insect. These creatures are the size of a large dog, six-legged, covered with a furry chitinous skin. They can walk bipedally, but usually scurry about down on all legs with which they can climb up walls like a spider. They are extremely cowardly and skittish, possibly this is where their name came from. If they meet any real resistance they are "gone". Gonish have an eerie ability to become in essence living shadow creatures, becoming effectively invisible in low-light conditions, surprising foes on a 5-6. When in this form they cannot physically attack but can only be attacked by energy weapons or mental attacks. They lurk in the dark recesses of ruins, hiding above passages in their shadow form, when prey passes they wait until the last party member goes by then attempt to use their fragrance development to attack them. If successful they will attack attempting to lay eggs inside the host. If any resistance occurs or others attack them, they will unleash Killing Sphere and flee.

 Believe it or not this creature was totally random, I felt uninspired this evening so I opened up the awesome Random Esoteric Creature Generator and went with what I rolled up.  The picture while not completely accurate gives some concept of what the critter looks like.
Have a good one! -B

Mid South Con and some rambling thoughts...

 My wife and I got to take a break from work, school and the kids to go to Mid South Con; a local Gaming Convention this weekend.   I took her to her first game con years ago and she loved it.  We've tried to make going to the local one a regular event, sadly due to work we've missed the past two years.  She especially loves the art auction and we always come home with a new art piece for the house, I spend alot of my time in the dealer room seeing what kinds of interesting items I can find.  We got to go to some cool discussion panels, including one about Steampunk (my wife saw the Apparition Abolishers walking the halls in full gear and she didn't know what Steampunk was so this was a perfect opportunity). The local 501st was there, as well as, Klingons, a roving pack of pre-teen anime kids (yikes), and other folks.  Here's an example of what the hall traffic was like.

The White Spy is actually a good buddy of mine, he and the Black Spy ran about all day doing skits, it was great!
   It was great to see old gaming buddies of mine that I don't get to game with these days, made some new friends too.  I did notice something though, to me the RPG games were a fraction of what they used to be. This year was in a different venue (they apparently changed hotels last year) from what I was used to so maybe that was part of it, but it seemed that there weren't nearly the variety of RPG games being played in the gamerooms (*sigh* no Mutant Future).  There was a decent amount of "Living" RPG games, a local gaming group is really into Living games and runs alot of those at Cons. But, personally I'm not a fan of those, to each his own.  I like to try out different games at cons, ones that I haven't had the chance to play before.  Cons are where I first got to play Mutants & Masterminds, All Flesh Must Be Eaten, Deadlands etc..  I saw just a few games of interest that I would have liked to try out but they were filled up with several on waiting lists. What also seemed to be missing to me were the random pick up games, I'm used to seeing people just getting together on a free table, rolling up some characters and slinging dice, but I saw none of that this time around. Maybe I just wasn't in the right place at the right time. What I did see alot of was Board Games, in fact three of my old Die Hard RPG gaming buddies that I ran into said they had quit RPG's and now only played Board Games! Some of them said it was cause of real life time schedules, others had soured on 4E.  Don't get me wrong there was some definate RPG gaming going on, it just seemed to be "less" than what I remember from the past. 
     All in all, we had a blast. I liked the new venue, the old one was in a bad part of town, with limited local eating opportunities.  I hear next year it will move again and the new location will be even closer to where I live.  My wife and I are even talking about trying to go to Dragon Con next year, with costumes!! How cool is that!  Neither of us have ever been and we've heard great things about it.  So in closing it was a great weekend and for us Mid South Con 28 was a success!

RPG Creatures

 Thanks to a post by Tetsubo I found this cool blog; RPG Creatures it has a small but growing collection of some really unique and interesting beasties that could be useful for all kinds of campaigns.
Check it out!

Word Verification Wednesday (Late Post)

Apologies…

     I was unable to post a Word Verification Wednesday beastie yesterday. Work and school is kicking my butt. I opted to write my paper last night so that I can go to the local Gaming Convention with my wife this weekend! Whoo hoo!
So to make it up to you I'll do a little post tonite. I recently got the word verification word Ingors, sounded cool to me and I envisioned a mutant goat beastie, well I'm no artist, so I put my search engines to work and found some awesome pictures and a mythical creature I had never heard of before The Krampus.

Santa Claus is coming to town and he's bringing his escort of mutant goat monsters!

Apparently in Austria and Bavaria and some other countries along with the legend of St. Nicholas coming around to give presents to good kids is his escort of the Krampus! Horned, shaggy goat-like monsters, they come out twice a year with clanging cowbells, dangling chains and "sinister" switches to punish the bad kids, I think I got off easy with my lumps of coal over the years! Yikes! Actually from what I've been able to determine the Krampus haven't been clearly labeled as to whether or not they are his henchmen or his enemies.

These beasts would work great for Mutant Future, Labyrinth Lord or even some other systems. Christian over at the Destination Unknown blog has been working on a Changeling Campaign, while I admit I've never played Changeling, I would think something like these guys would feel right at home in such a setting. Not having the Changeling books I'll leave Christian to stat these up for that system. So without further ado here is a Mutant Future write-up for your gaming enjoyment!


Ingors AKA Krampus
No. Enc.: 1 (1d8)
Alignment: Chaotic
Movement: 120'/40'
Armor Class: 6
Hit Dice: 9
Attacks: gore or by weapon (typically chains, whips or "switches").
Damage: 2d4 or varies by weapon type
Save: L7
Morale: 9
Hoard Class: XXII
Mutations: Night Vision, Horns, Furred Hide (AC 6), Unique Sense (Detect BAD children),

For Labyrinth Lord, just tweak the hit dice and damage to suit your needs, and make the mutations natural or supernatural and your good to go!

                               Junior Krampus! How creepily Cool!

Lego Green Army Upgrade!

 My BrickArms order came in the mail today.  I haven't ordered from them before, just recently getting into the whole Lego Minifig scene, but after getting the Lego Green Army Men I knew I needed to get them some better weapons and gear. The BrickArms green weapons I ordered are limited edition and were designed specifically for use with the Lego Toy Story minifigs. 

You can see the bronze freebie and the few other items I also ordered in the the bottom right corner.

Overall I am quite pleased with my order and will no doubt order from them again.  My camera doesn't take good close up pics, but you can get the idea.

Now back to working on Firebase Lego!

Simian Saturday

Word Verification Wednesday - Reptur

Reptur

No. Enc.: 2d4 (2d8)
Alignment : Neutral to Chaotic
Movement : 120'(40')
Armor Class : 4
Hit Dice : 8
Attacks : 1
Damage : by weapon
Save : L4
Morale : 9 (10 for the chaotic ones)
Hoard Class : XXII
Mutations: Thermal Vision, Natural Armor (AC6), Regenerative Capability, Mental Barrier, Increased Dexterity
     There is some debate as to whether Repturs are a race of mutant humans or mutant reptiles. Most don't care either way, just wanting to avoid this race altogether. While warm blooded they tend to avoid cooler climates as much as possible and are mostly found in and near the Kudzu Jungles and swamps of the southeast. However some members of this race go through a change, they call the Crimson Madness. Those so changed are far more violent and dangerous and are driven out of their homelands usually to wander the desert wastelands. Unfortunately these are the ones most commonly encountered by other races. These wastelanders are quite chaotic and work and live as raiders or worse. The chaotic ones are easily distinguished from their brethren for their love of the color red; they will be seen wearing it upon their bodies, either as war paint clothing or both. Disturbingly they also like to bask in the blood of their victims another quality that other races (and their more peaceful brethren) find to be quite revolting.
The Reptur (both types) have a particular dislike of the Awpikel, and are "naturally" somewhat resistant to the Awpikel's mental phantasm attack. The Awpikel have a mutual dislike of the Reptur and where they might normally flee or retreat from a difficult encounter they usually do not do so when attacked by a Reptur raider band.