Burt Lancaster and Robin Laws

I was watching a couple of Burt Lancaster movies last night (“The Crimson Pirate” and “The Flame and the Arrow”). I was thinking as I watched them how wonderful it would be if GM’s (me included) could pace a game as well as a Burt Lancaster swashbuckler. I have to try to keep that level of “Huzzah!” going in my game.


I’m also reading Robin's Laws of Good Gamemastering. In his book he goes into a lot of things that GM’s should already know but may have forgotten over time. It’s a good read despite being edited worse than my Blog.

Daniel Boone Marathon on TVLand

Growing up as a child of the 70's I watched a lot of TV. Daniel Boone was one of my favorite shows. This weekend TVLand is running a Daniel Boone marathon. and then later on 09/26/2006 several DVD sets of this great old series will be released on DVD. Yes the history is a bit flawed, but the adventures are fun, it's safe for kids, and the scenery is beautiful (California and Utah).

LoS update- Legend Points

The following is a draft of the Legend Point system currently under consideration for the Legends of Steel RPG.

Legend Points

In Legends of Steel your character is expected to be a cut above the average human. He is the one who challenges the Emperor’s Champion to single combat, the one who faces down a horde of raving tribesmen, the one who scales the temple tower to retrieve the “Night Gems of Opara” from a serpent infested treasury. To accomplish these feats your character will need more than a strong sword arm and loyal companions. For this reason we have Legend points.

All characters begin play with 2 legend points. At the game masters discretion more points may be earned but it’s recommended that this not exceed more than one Legend Point award per session. Legend Points are special and should be awarded only in instances where the character has performed an exceptional act of bravery, selflessness, compassion or sacrifice.

A character that stays behind to hold off the enemy while his comrades make good their escape, should he survive, would have earned a Legend point. A hero who refuses a villages meager reward for aiding them in driving off a were beast is also a candidate for a Legend point.

In times of great need your heroes can spend their legend points to directly affect the outcome of the adventure.

Legend points will allow your character one of the following benefits:

· Double your chance-by spending a legend point your character is allowed to roll twice on the declared action and may take the better of the two as his result. The player must declare his intention to use this benefit BEFORE he rolls.

· Total heal- “It was just a flesh wound.” The player may use a legend point to totally restore all LIFE and STUN points lost. This can only be done while the character still has at least one point in both LIFE and STUN.

· Restore willpower- the player may use a legend point to totally restore all WILLPOWER points lost by his character. This can only be done while the character still has at least one point of WILLPOWER.

· Critical strike- by spending a Legend point the character turns a successful hit into a critical hit as if they had rolled a natural “01”.

Quotes from the victims of the Evil DM

“Until now, I didn’t think arch-devils traveled in groups”.
“I missed with a natural 20?”
“I didn’t think anything did 40-400 points of damage”.
“We should have become farmers”.
“I didn’t even know Zeus was mad at me”.
“He has a magic resistance of what?”
“You say we were completely surprised by a fifty-foot dinosaur hiding in that empty field”.
“The thief stole my fighter’s armor while he was wearing it?”
“Armed with only a silver belt buckle, my hero is surrounded by hordes of werewolves…”
“Well, you’re right that Vulcan vampires do have their hearts in a different location”.
“Each of the kobolds has a wand of Orcus?”
“So, this troll seems to be regenerating our fire damage”.
“Fighters can’t use edged weapons?”
“I never heard of a sword of party member slaying”.
“Since when is Gruumsh* a wandering monster?”
“You don’t use saving throws?”
“Thanks. I always thought having two arms wasn’t challenging enough”.
“But the A-bomb hasn’t been invented yet!”
“No, seriously, how much damage did I take?”
“A pack of tarrasques?”
“Come on, in a first-level dungeon? It has to be a gas spore”.
“That’s one tough kobold”.
“Tinker gnomes invented Uzis?”
“Exactly what is a ‘pantheon’, and why is it mad at me?”
“Just how many 30th-level evil wizards are there in this village?”
“I never knew Tiamat had so many twin sisters”.
“That’s its forty-third attack. Can we draw our swords now?”
“How did BattleMechs get into this dungeon?”
“Our group decides not to go to the Castle of Ultimate Pain, but instead back into town”.
“So you’re saying if you cut off their eyes, they grow into little beholders”.
“’Spontaneous decompression’ is a spell?”
“That’s okay, the spikes broke his fall”.
“Do you think we could use store-bought modules from now on?”
“But I’m already dead!”

Nobody beats up Filipino stuntmen quite like Jim Kelly

Rome on DVD

I'm not shilling for Amazon or HBO-just giving a heads up to my thousands of readers (heh). Amazon has the first season on DVD for about $60.00 that's about $30.00 less than it is in the stores. I cannot recommend this series enough. If you like this Blog then chances are you will like this series. I caught the whole first season from start to finish and it ROCKED! But hey, wait around, Netflix it and see for yourself.

New Chap Mei Pirates!

I just got back from BigLots. They have a whole slew of new figures in. My favorite of the bunch are this years new sets of Pirates from Chap Mei.
They have Two new Pirate figures and about four new sets including a hidden treasure set and a pirate ship. The pirate ship isn't huge but it's enough for the kids to have fun with. The figures still have lousy articulation, but the accessories and detail are excellent for the price. Here are a couple of pics of the box.

Heroscape, Marvel Heroscape, and Hollow Earth At Gen Con

I found some cool pics over at Gaming report.

GURPS

I’ve been a gamer for almost 30 years, I started like most with Dungeons & Dragons and continued with all the basics- Traveller, Champions, Runequest, Gamma World, Boot hill, Etc. But my gaming world was turned upside down with a crazy sounding game called GURPS. There was a time when I was known in my circle of friends as “The GURPS guy”.
I ran a campaign called “Everwhen” where my players were allowed to create characters from any genre or time period. They were then kidnapped from their home universes and teamed up with each other to deal with threats to the Multiverse. I also ran a Hyborian campaign for several years in Hawaii and a real fun “Cliffhangers” pulp game. Whenever I went to our local game store, the owner would show us the “latest innovation in RPG’s”, I’d flip through the pages, nod politely and say “Cool. But I can do that with GURPS”.
Through the years I’ve dabbled in many systems but I always came home to AD&D and GURPS. I really haven’t been doing much tabletop gaming in the last few years so when GURPS went to it’s fourth edition I didn’t rush right out to get it, first off like I said I wasn’t doing any gaming, secondly they split the basic book into two volumes with a sticker price of $39.99 each, and then add to that the fact that I got screwed by D&D 3.0 going to 3.5 almost overnight.
Well, the other day I saw Amazon had the Character book for like $25.00 with free shipping. I figured it was about time to take the plunge. I got the book yesterday and have spent every spare moment perusing it. They’ve tightened up the rules, gathered all the skills together in one place and finally gave the game some decent art. Next payday I’ll be picking up the Campaign book and hopefully I’ll find some folks at the next gamers Meetup who will be interested enough to play.

Funny, but for whatever reason I never could like 3rd edition D&D, I tried but it just wasn’t there for me. But I can hardly wait to play GURPS 4th edition.

Heromachine Dwarves

I ran across these Dwarves I made a while back using Heromachine. One of the most addictive programs on the net.  

Knights of Cydonia

My buddy Jeff at Jeff's Gameblog turned me on to this video.
It's so cool on so many levels.
Knights of Cydonia

Lone Wolf

Today I decided to take a walk during lunch and check out the local used bookstore. I saw a couple of the Lone Wolf game books in the bargain bin so I picked them up. I have a quasi-collection of these and the Endless Quest books from TSR. I collect them for my sons-can’t start the indoctrination soon enough eh?
Anyway, I did a little surfing back at work and came across a website that has a few of the earlier books on PDF. More importantly they have a PDF of the Magnamund Companion, A gazetteer of the world of Lone Wolf. This is one tough book to find ( I found a copy at a game store years ago and have since had several offers of up to $50.00 to part with it). One of the neat features in the book is a section with some ship construction guidelines,using paper, balsa wood and some household items, the results are impressive. I might take a crack at it one of these days.

Gotta Game!

There was a time in my life when getting a group together to game was a simple matter. I would make a few phone calls and my house would fill up with gamers, their girlfriends and other assorted hangers on. That was in the late 80’s – I was single had a pretty good job and nothing much else going on in my life to cut into weekend long gaming marathons. Those days are long gone. Now I have a family and a host of responsibilities and commitments. But never the less I still get the itch to sling dice and geek out for a few hours. The problem for me now is finding like-minded folks. My old gaming buddies are into other pastimes and I'm not into hanging out at the gaming room at the local game store because frankly, it smells bad- the place and some of the gamers.

Another problem I have is that I never really made the big switch to the newest editions of the games I played. I couldn’t see spending all that money again to catch up. So here I am a 42-year-old gaming dinosaur, trying to find that lost valley where the rest of my herd has gone.

I'm kinda leery of the "posting the name on the gaming board" route - I’ve had mixed success. On one hand when I was in Hawaii I answered a post for a group called D.O.G.S (Dedicated Oahu Gaming Society) and met a great group of guys and made some lasting friendships. On the other hand, I once had some pseudo / Satanist vampire wannabe’s show up at my door wanting to game. Oh, reckless youth!

Nowadays I have a wife and kids so I have to be very careful about who I invite into my home and my life.

I found this meet up site that has a D&D group in my area that meets monthly. I figured I’d give it a shot. They meet up at a local Denny’s and socialize and game. It seems fairly cordial. I looked over some of the profiles and it runs the typical gamut of folks that are into the hobby. Who knows I might get lucky and find a couple of other dinosaurs looking for a good game of Star Frontiers.