On Vacation

On Vacation

On Vacation

On Vacation

On Vacation

Merry Christmas

Xenozoic is beautiful!

I am just getting to my copy of the Xenozoic book I bought a few weeks ago.  Needless to say I am loving it. I completely missed these stories in the 80's and it was just by coincidence that this beautiful compilation came out a few weeks ago. From what I understand fans of Mark Schultz have been waiting many moons for this.

Legends of Steel for ZeFRS is out of layout

I just received the manuscript the other day. I'll be looking it over AFTER the holidays. Then it will be released.


One special thing about this edition of Legends of Steel is that, other than operating expenses, all of the proceeds will be used to fund future ZeFRS projects. So rather than clip art we plan to have original art to make it look the best we can. Other possibilities are Character generators or a dedicated website. We'll see-but the best news is that this edition is that much closer to release.

John Carter Warlord of Mars

For those of you not in the know, Dynamite Entertainment is releasing Warlord of Mars in comic form.  I say this because a lot of the folks who hang out here aren't major comic geeks, so I just wanted to give them a heads up.

Lazy Sunday Photodump

The minions shook the hold of Nintendo DS and actually learned something this weekend

We had a stay-in -Lair day yesterday, thanks to heavy rains in the area. I looked out amongst my throng of Minions and noticed that their eyes were all glued to little tiny screens. I thought this would be a perfect time for a forced learning experience. I ordered all electronics turned off and then told them all that their would be a block of instruction on the a facet of the American West.  I started with a brief lecture on ranching, the cattle industry, and the logistics  of getting beef from the rural ranches to the cities in 19th century America. I then wrapped up the lecture with a showing of John Wayne's western classic: The Cowboys.  

For those of you bereft of a classical education, The Cowboys is the story of a rancher who is forced to use schoolboys to help move his cattle 400 miles from his ranch to the rail lines. The movie is a wonderful coming of age tale and one of "The Dukes" best performances. 


The Minions enjoyed the movie and at Sunday breakfast they regaled  "She who must be obeyed" with a review of the movie and how folk in the big cities got their beef.  So all in all, the lesson stuck.


Next week we'll be taking a look at the tensions between Norman and Saxon in Merrie Old England with a showing of Errol Flynn's - The Adventures of Robin Hood.

And the Winners are...

David J. West of the Nephite Blood, Spartan Heart Blog

                      

 &

YoyoRobbo of the Back in '81 Blog

Thanks to all you guys for participating and for hanging in there during my hiatus.  This was fun My minion,  Nicholas had fun drawing the names. 

Congratulations guys. Please send me your shipping info to Boojiesdad@gmaildotcom

And for those of you who didn't win this time around, remember, this is the season of giving -so buy a copy of Legends of Steel so that I can GIVE myself an IPad for Christmas. 

Lair Update

I figured we are about due for an update from the Lair…

Both Barbarians of Lemuria ZeFRS edition and BASH Ultimate edition are out of my hands and with the layout folk.   Chris at Basic Action Games will be handling the release of the BASH Ultimate edition and I’ll be handling ZeFRS. Both are in the home stretch folks…

I’m going to try something different with Dicey Tales. I’ll be releasing it as a periodical.  The first issue will deal with the first part of a pulp era expansion for Barbarians of Lemuria. The second issue will include the raining parts of the pulp expansion. The third issue will revisit Erisa with new material for Legends of Steel.

After that, I will probably try to keep the content pulp-centric –and my definition of pulp is as wide as the genre, so there will be opportunities for material for everything from Sword & Sorcery, Sword & planet, and westerns, to the supernatural and 60’s techno-adventures.

Here is a sample of some more art appearing I Dicey Tales.  The character art is from Chris Schieffer, the firearms are by Chris Harper.

As a side note, Chris Harper soon plans to release a set of pulp era firearm stock art.  If anyone has a suggestion for a particular weapon please let him know in the comments section.

Lazy Sunday Photodump

The Warlord cancelled...again.

In the "This sucks" department, I just found out that the latest incarnation of DC Comics The Warlord has been cancelled. I'm not sure why, most likely low sales. I guess if you don't have a fucking zombie on the cover of your favorite title it could be next. 

My comic guy was telling me that Warlord was a steady seller too, not red hot, but decent. I guess decent just doesn't cut it in the comics biz.

Dreaming of an "Official" Hyborian War for the PC

On the back of the late issues of the old Savage Sword of Conan magazine there was always an ad for Hyborian War. Hyborian War was a Play by Mail (PBM) game of world conquest set in Conan’s world, basically Conan Risk.  I never got around to playing it, but in the latter years with the advent of computer gaming I was sure that someone would catch on to the idea of a large scale war game for the PC using the Hyborian setting, but it never happened. 

I recently found a great little war-game called Field of Glory. It’s a turn-based strategy game where you command an army and either recreate famous historical battle or create new ones.  Fields of Glory also has an online component where you can challenge other players. I’m having a lot of fun with it and I can’t help but think this would be awesome if it was adapted for Conan’s world.

I've enjoyed strategy games in the past, but the world building requirements of most of the bore me. I could care less about feeding the peasants, building a chapel, or upgrading a smithy so that I can have chariots. I just want to go out there and kick some ass.

My ideal game would be one where I was the Captain of a Free Company of mercenaries and I could have them travel about the world hiring on, fighting, recruiting, and generally adventuring.  I wouldn’t mind a small logistics and supply portion where I would have to find supplies to feed the men or buy new and better weapons.

My one nit with Field of Glory is that I haven’t found a way to improve the units, whether I win or lose a battle, the next battle all the units are as good as new just like in Chess, I want a way to hire Peasant Levy and through training and experience have them grow into more effective units. But other than that Field of Glory is a great way to while away a half hour or so.

A small thank you to the "Followers"

Wow, I've been gone a couple of months and my readership actually grew!  I'm not sure what to make of that.  But  as a small "Thank you" for sticking around I'll be raffling off TWO hardback copies of The Barbarians of Lemuria edition of Legends of Steel. All you need to do is drop a comment letting me know you want in on the drawing. Everyone who has been a follower of the Lair or the Facebook site from 12082010 or earlier is eligible (Sorry "Anons"). deadline for the raffle is 11:59pm on 12/12/2010.