Take five minutes out of your day and read a cool story

Over at Beat to a pulp you will find a great short tale featuring Horror icon Bela Lugosi and Western Star Buck Jones, set in the Golden Age of Hollywood.

Its by James Reasoner and its called "One night near Hangtown".

And after that, join "Friend of the Lair" and Author Charles Gramlich on Moon Base Freedom for a tale called "Hunter's Moon".

Loving me some GI Joe!

It’s been a while since I’ve done any action figure kit bashing. Looking at Brineb”s Blog sure makes me want to get back into it.

He does some great work mixing classic Adventure Team GI Joe’s with a lot of the modern stuff. Go check it out.

Rio Draco from Fat Dragon Games

Fat Dragon games has long been a "Friend of the Lair". And every chance I get to promote their products I will, Not only because they are good products but because they have a very high standard of quality and originality.

Stop by RPGNow and check out their latest release Rio Draco

The Rio Draco base set kicks off Fat Dragon Games new line of wild west terrain. This starter set includes everything you need, six unique buildings, each with multiple texture options, 3D boardwalks, balconies, hitching posts, water troughs, out houses and even a covered wagon!


This set included:

• American west style ground tiles including multiple detail options.

• Stream and pond tiles

• Bonus 2D tiles for building layouts

• Sheriff's office

• Saloon

• Dry Goods/General Store

• Hardware Store/ Trading Post

• Gun Shop

• Bank

• Outhouse

• Covered Wagon

• Hitching posts

• Water Trough

• Building texture options that YOU customize

• Full color beginners guide



As much as I love their fantasy inspired products, there is always a warm spot in my heart for westerns. I'm crossing my fingers for a western fort and eventually a move towards more pulpy fare such a Desert outpost and maybe a tramp steamer.

Pick up a copy of Rio Draco today at RPGNow.

If you've never failed, you've never lived.

I'm passing this on from DarcOso's Blog.

Lazy Sunday Photodump

Meet Jed…

Here at the Lair we take our favorite holiday seriously. No cute little Hallmark holiday witches and chubby little ghosts. We don’t do cute for Halloween. 

This year the theme was “The Witches Graveyard”.

The story goes that out in the country, there is an old abandoned pumpkin field, where where witches go to bury their dead.  And every year on Halloween the witches bring white roses to remember their dead sisters. 

To keep the villagers from desecrating the witches graves, the coven created Jed.

 

 Jed is not really a Scarecrow, he’s more of a Scarehuman.

 

 

Like I said, we don’t do “cute” for Halloween.

Get ready for a "nerdgasm" - War of the Worlds - Goliath DVD

Chris just sent this in to me. check out this trailer!

I checked their Blog- no updates since August (not a good sign) but I'll keep my fingers crossed, cause this looks too damned good.

Very disappointed and then pleasantly surprised.

The Minions were home with me this week, the victims of flu bugs and a badly sprained arm. The easy way to get through all that was to plant their sick and injured butts in front of the Xbox and let their brains glaze over on video games. Instead I took the opportunity to try out a couple of recent gaming purchases on them.

Now while I'm a dedicated RPG gamer I never really got into the dice and card games. but I figured they might be fun to pass the time with the minions without having to invest the hours setting up a RPG session. so I picked up the Inn fighting dice game from WOTC and the Munchkin card game from Steve Jackson games.

We tried Inn Fighting first.


Inn Fighting basically tries to simulate a classic barroom brawl at an Adventurers tavern. each player gets a character card with the various races and classes of the D&D world. Each card has advantages, disadvantages, and special abilities in line with ones race or class.

The rules seemed simple enough, until you got into actual play. once we started playing a few questions popped up that needed resolving before play could continue, probably not a big deal amongst a group of experienced gamers who were willing to slog through it until they got it down, but with kids or non-gamers it can be a real drag-which it was. I ended up saying screw-it and putting the game away and moving on to the next game, Munchkin.



Now Munchkin is a card game where each player is a member of an adventuring party that's looting a dungeon. It's a parody of every cliche you've ever seen while going through a dungeon crawl. Munchkin was quick to learn, funny as all hell and got us involved in some good old fashioned wheeling and dealing as well as backstabbing fun. The Minions and I loved it.

I always heard that Munchkin was SJG's big moneymaker, even more so than GURPS, now I see why- the game is fun quick, and really easy to pick up even among non gamers. And to capitalize on the games success they have a ton of expansion sets, which I'm sure I'll soon be collecting.

GURPS – Because sometimes “crunch” is cool

In my gaming heyday I had two main go to systems AD&D for my Greyhawk Campaign, and GURPS for everything else. 

Conan? GURPS.

Pulp? GURPS.

Western? GURPS.

Space opera? GURPS.

Horror? GURPS.

Space-Horror? GURPS.

Of course I played Traveller, Chill, Boot Hill, Star Frontiers, Top Secret, and all the rest.

But when I bought that first edition boxed set with the dumb name – Generic Universal Rolepaying  System. My gaming world turned upside down. I remember sitting down and reading through it and slowly realizing “I can do anything with this”.

In our group we had the Champions guy, the Battletech guy, the weird ass homebrew AD&D campaign guy - I became the resident GURPS guy. GURPS could do just about everything (just about- Supers was a sore subject amongst GURPS Aficionados back then).

When I moved to Hawaii GURPS went with me, and with my copy of GURPS Conan I ran one of my best  campaigns ever. It was a full table every weekend- ahh the memories.

(Man, I love that cover)

Since my return to California, and the start of Evil DM Productions, I’ve been reading, playing, writing and catering to much lighter, faster, fluffier systems. But for some reason today I started thinking of my old GURPS campaign with all their crunch and attention to character detail. 

The detail involved in GURPS character creation is something I must say I miss. These “’light system” games are okay. when you can get all the rules distilled down enough to fit on the back of a matchbook your bound to lose something in the process.  I confess, sometimes I enjoyed slogging through character creation with line paper, pencils and four different splat books spread over my kitchen table as I wrestled with my calculator to create the ultimate character with 250 points. And yeah, when one of my GURPS guys bought the farm I felt it, not in a spastic table –flipping breakdown, but a hell of a lot more than I do with the disposable characters I seem to play with these days.

And beyond the fun of creating a GURPS character, there was the sheer joy of perusing the different worldbooks.

Conan, Cliffhanger, Witchworld, Horror, Castle Falkenstein, Discworld, Lensman, Ice Age, and on, and on and on… Those damn books are so cool that even if you didn't play the system, you still read the books. I mean GURPS Horseclans for God’s sake, where the hell are you gonna get a decent RPG treatment of the Horseclans series??

There seem to be great gobs of “beer and pretzel” systems out there these days, but every once in a while you want to indulge in a luxurious prime rib system, when i get in that mood I reach for GURPS.

GURPS, its what’s  dinner.

Manly Monday

Lazy Sunday Photodump

My 70's show

Big ass shirt collars.



Hiding in the trunk of an Impala to sneak in to a drive in showing "Cheech and Chong's Up in smoke". And being quite stoned the whole time.

Girls in tube tops.




Drinking Lucky Lager cause it was cheap. You could get a case for like $2.50

platform shoes and bell bottom jeans



The whole 70's run of the Avengers, Culminating in Avengers #176 and #177

Reading Mad, Crazy, Cracked and Car Toons

Adidas

Ten speed bikes (I had a Schwinn Varsity)

Having a Geek crush on Wonder Woman, Isis, The Asian chick from Ark II, and Electra woman & Dyna girl.




Boz Skaggs "Silk Degrees" and "Frampton comes alive"

Trying to buy peppermint schnapps because we heard girls would drink it.

8 Track tapes-remember how they would fade out, change tracks and the fade in?

watching 8mm porn in my buddies garage.

Double dating in my buddy Bill's Polara - it had a 3 speed push button transmission (no shit).

And this song...

Evil DM Auction – Tarzan and Casca Paperbacks!

This week we take a break from games and move to my other passion – books.

When you have as many books as I do (which is too damn many according to “She who must be obeyed”), you eventually pick up a few doubles – which is the case with a few of the Tarzan’s. And when you find a true Pulp rarity sitting amongst a pile of bargain-bin Harlequin romances, your soul screams to rescue them – as was the case with the Casca books.

The Tarzan’s aren't really rare at all but they are fun to read.

The black covers are:

#9 Tarzan and the Golden Lion

#10 Tarzan and the Ant Men

#12 Tarzan and The Lost Empire

#13 Tarzan at the Earths core

The white covers are:

#7 Tarzan The Untamed

#8 Tarzan the Terrible

#17 Tarzan and the Lion Man

and finally, a 1964 copy of #22 Tarzan and the Foreign Legion

The Casca’s are quite a find, especially since they are all early ones:

#1 Casca: The Eternal Mercenary

#2 Casca: God of Death

#3 Casca: The Warlord

and #7 Casca: The Damned

Not a bad haul for a Casca fan. All are in decent readable condition. See the picture-

****BIG DAMN DISCLAIMER****
I am not a professional grader of books. These are “reading copies” I rescued from Goodwill . As I've stated in previous auctions, If you want to complete your private collection proceed, if you want to turn a buck and intend to bitch about every bend and crease on the cover, then move on.

The auction is over! Thanks everyone!

Paypal only (no cash, checks, or electrum pieces)

Payment due within 3 days from the end of the auction.

U.S. bidders only (seriously guys, U.S. Bidders only)

Winner agrees to pay $11.00 for USPS flat-rate Priority mail.

Auction ends at 12:00pm PST on Tuesday October 20th 2009.

Bid in comments section or at Boojiesdad at gmail.com

Good luck.

Legends of Steel Savage Worlds Edition reviewed on Game Geeks!

Legends of Steel Savage Worlds Edition was given a great review at Game Geeks!

AWESOME!

Paperback search

As you guys know I'm a bit of a pulp-fiction paperback fanatic. I'm having a helluva time closing up a couple of gaps in my collection.

Here are a couple of titles causing me grief.

I have the first three of the Falcon series but #4 is eluding me.

I'm also looking for any of the Wolfs head series. I have a battered and torn copy of #3 but If I should run across a better one I'll take it.



I've checked all the regular places E-bay, Amazon, several used book finding engines. But either its a no-go or they are too damned expensive. I collect to read not to put them in little plastic bags, so spending $25.00 for a used book is not gonna happen.

So if any of you guys have a an extra copy of any of these that you would be willing to let go for a decent price (like under $10.00) let me know.

Manly Monday

Lazy Sunday Photodump