John Carter - Oh my Lord...

The Mars books by Edgar Rice Burroughs were an early favorite of mine.  I suppose it had to wait until now to be made with all the grandness that it deserves.  You MUST read the books, at least the first book to truly appreciate what Pixar and Disney are making. There are those who are making ignorant comparisons to Avatar. Fools. A Princess of Mars established an entire genre of fiction and reigns supreme in it.

Manly Monday- Those were the days...*sigh*

Lazy Sunday Photodump

Dicey Tales on sale with free PDF copy!

In the spirit of making a quick buck we have decided to make a special offer on issue #1 of Dicey Tales. From today through midnight (PST) on Monday all print copies of Dicey Tales are $2.00 off and come with a free PDF Copy. So now is a great opportunity to order a book that has been personally hailed by my mom as "A really nice looking book".

You can order right there on the sidebar.

Happy Thanksgiving...now buy the book.

Gaming with the Minions...

Our First session of Castles and Crusades started today. Two of my Minions participated. One of them played a human Paladin named Joshua and the other played a Gnome Rogue known as “Little Peter”-(don’t ask). They travel with a Halfling Mercenary swordsman named Kupo (who had a class that day) and an NPC Cleric named Helga.  Helga is a standard NPC that I sue in almost all my games where a combat medic role is needed. She is usually a no-nonsense Cleric of St. Cuthbert who has no tolerance for evil, undead, or laziness. In this campaign however, I decided to forgo the entire pantheon of god’s and simply take a cue from the works of the late David Gemmell- I use “The Source” to represent the forces of good and “The Darkness” to represent the forces of evil. So in this campaign Helga is a Source Priestess, though still a foe of shirkers and cowards.  

I’ve decided to run them through the introductory module “Shadows of the Halfling Hall”.

To make a long story short- Helga and Joshua have been asked by the local Abbott to travel to the Halfling shire of Newbriar to investigate reports of the town leaders all disappearing after attending a party at a local well-to-do Halfling’s estate.

Arriving in the small shire, Joshua and Helga (accompanied by their comrade Little Peter) make their way to the local Pub and meet with the interim Sherriff. Who fills them in about the missing Halflings, the party they attended, and the loss of the patrol that was sent to look for the partygoers the day after the party.

Our three heroes decide to make their way to the estate and investigate. They arrive at noon and find the estate in shambles, with a very definite aura of evil emanating from the darkened doorway.  With their Halfling guides safely down the road providing morale support, our heroes descend into the manor.

The grand main hall resembles a slaughter house of the damned. Corpses and body parts are strewn about the place along with broken and upended furnishings, rotting food and an overpowering stench of death and decay. It must have been some party.

As our heroes continued further into the great hall the bodies of the Halflings begin to reanimate and gather to attack the intruders. Helga summons the power of the source and turns a good number of the zombies, but not all.  Joshua whirls his great sword in a silver arc and wades into a group of Halfling undead. Little Peter unloads his hand crossbow and imbeds a quarrel right in the eye socket of a zombie (The first natural “20” of the campaign). The battle lasts several rounds and though its close, our heroes are victorious. Little Peter was grievously wounded and was drug out of the manor by Helga as Joshua dispatched the last of the zombie welcoming committee.

Our heroes decide to return to the village, heal up and await the arrival of their sword-brother Kupo, Before delving further into the horrors of the Halfling Hall.


Now all of this was with the new Castles and Crusades (C&C) system I wrote about a few days ago.  Well, I'm here to report that so far C&C gets two great big thumbs up!  The character creation rules are a breeze and combat was fun and exciting. Now,  I'm running this for my guys who are 11 and 12 years old so the roleplaying is slow and halting but it will get better as they get older and more comfortable with the system.  But I am having  a great time reliving that feeling of low level character death coming with every new dice roll and the elation when a solid hit is scored. 

C&C? We'll see...

The minions and I have a regular Dicey Tales game going on every weekend. The episodes feature the adventures of Dr. Arachnid and The Skull, two intrepid crime fighters that roam the fog-shrouded streets of 1930's San Francisco in search of evil doers to thwart. 
Now as much fun as that is, I still have the hankering to do a bit of old fashioned "dungeon crawling". So in celebration of "Teach Your Kids To Game Week" I've decided to restart our fantasy campaign for a few adventures.  We had a regular Pathfinder game going for a bit but I noticed that it ran a bit slow. I'm thinking that the Pathfinder system may be a bit much for my lads at the moment, hell it's a bit much for me most times. When I switched them over to Dicey Tales the sessions seemed to glide on rails as opposed to our Pathfinder games. I would normally just switch to Legends of Steel for a fantasy fix, but my minions want to play Gnomes and Elves, which we all know is pure blasphemy in Legends of Steel.  So I did a little research and  turned to Castles and Crusades. 


Now personally I'm an old 2nd Edition fan (at last count I think there are at least 3 or 4 dozen of us left world-wide) but I want my boys to have at least one foot in modern gaming and still get a little Gygaxian influence in their game. I'm hoping that C&C has the right mix of what I'm looking for. First I bought a PDF of the Players Handbook (PHB) and then I tried to go budget and get a copy of their "Little PHB", thinking that it would be like the Savage Worlds Explorers Edition-wrong answer- the print on that damn thing is so tiny, it gave me a headache. I finally ponied up the money and picked up the  PHB in hard back-that was more like it.  I'm going though it now and so far I think I made a good choice. It has much that is reminiscent of 1st & 2nd Edition AD&D but with enough common sense changes to make me smile- and it has Monks!
The truth will be in the playing though so I'll let you all know if C&C makes the grade here at the Lair.

Lazy Sunday Photodump

Danger 5

Hats off to Chris for this nugget of pure pop pulp gold: www.danger5.tv