Evil DM Auction- Top Secret 1st Edition

We are back to RPG’s for the next Goodwill find. TSR’s Espionage classic Top Secret (1st edition). Normally this would be a keeper for me, but I already have several copies (also I’m more of a Top Secret S.I. player).

Note that the module isn't the original that came with the boxed set. But the module that is included (Operation: Rapid Strike) is in almost mint condition. The actual rulebook is in sweet shape as well.

check out the pics:

****BIG DAMN DISCLAIMER****
I am not a professional grader of books and games. 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 winning bid is $10.00

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 6:00pm PST on Wednesday November 11th 2009.

Bid in comments section or at Boojiesdad at gmail.com

Good luck.

Evil DM Productions (EDMP)

Con on the Cob
I had made plans to attend Con on the Cobb in Ohio. Well of course the surgery prevented that from happening. Since EDMP had already paid for table space, Chris agreed to man the table and take down emails for a free gift for stopping by. My fear was that the poor guy would be just sitting there doing nothing. Well that turned out not to be the case. Chris was able to show off his artwork including several pieces that he’s working on for the “Lost World of Hador”. He also had to state several time that he was not The Evil DM. Chris was also able to network and Schmooze with industry folks and all in all he reported having a good time. The folks who signed up for the “free gift” received a free PDF copy of Legends of Steel-Savage Worlds.

Legends of Steel
Speaking of Legends of Steel, in March we released the Savage Worlds Edition, Followed by the Broadsword Edition, And most recently the Barbarians of Lemuria Edition. Each version so far has garnered good reviews, including a great one on Amazon. LoS has been featured on “The Games the thing” podcast and on the “Game Geeks” You Tube show. We received a few dings for layout issues, but as far as the content, it’s all been positive. We are continuing our efforts to make LoS available to as many gaming systems as possible. The New Year should see the release of the ZeFRS edition of Legends of Steel and a Legends of Steel supplement for the new edition of the Basic Action Game System.

Partnerships
In recent months EDMP has been able to form creative partnerships with other companies, most notably Beyond Belief Games –creators of the Barbarians of Lemuria (BoL)RPG, and Basic Action Games- Developers of the Basic Action Super Heroes (BASH) line of RPG products. Since EDMP focuses on support products and campaign resources, rather than system creation, We believe these partnerships will enable our products reach a larger market as we assist and support existing RPG product lines Such as the BoL and BASH RPG engines in addition to continuing our support for the Savage World’s and 1PG systems.

GenCon
With the success of Legends of Steel and several other products in various stages of completion, We have decided to look into making a showing as a company at the 2010 GenCon. Our goal is to have several different products for sale at the convention as well as unveiling at least one product that weekend.

Projects
As stated earlier, we have several product lines in various stages of completion. Our goal is to have a good mix of product offerings available for GenCon 2010.
While there are several products in development that we are keeping under wraps, here is a general breakdown of some of the products we have ready or that will be ready by the August deadline:

Legends of Steel (LoS)
Legends of Steel is a Sword & Sorcery guidebook and Campaign Gazetteer for the world of Erisa.
LoS Savage Worlds: Done
LoS Broadsword: Done
LoS Barbarians of Lemuria: Done
LoS ZeFRS: Awaiting Layout
LoS BASH: In production

Swords of Erisa (For LoS)
Swords of Erisa offers additional characters, locations, and adventures for use with Legends of Steel.
Swords of Erisa: In Production

Lost World of Hador (LWoH)
The Lost World of Hador is a Lost Worlds adventure using a pulp setting.
LWoH Savage Worlds: In Production
LWoH Dime Heroes: In Production
LWoH BoL: In Production

Mission: Adventure!
Sci-Spy Action from the 60's and 70's.
Mission: Adventure! : In pre-production

The World of Aurora
Aurora is a magical world of Romance and Heroic Adventure in a "Victorian" setting.
World book and adventure “For love and honor”: In pre-production

Age of Epics
A fantasy based medieval world of adventure the classic vein of the Prince Valiant comic strip.
Age of Epics: In pre-production

Its a long, long way from home

My recovery from the two surgeries in September continues. I have physical therapy several times a week and follow-up visits with my doctor. Some days are better than others in dealing with the pain. I still can’t sit for longer than 20 minutes at a time, which really isn’t conducive to being a writer. Fortunately, with the notebook I am able to change positions and write while lying down. According to my physician and therapists the recovery is going well, especially since I am doing it without pain meds. I decided against using medication after the withdrawal symptoms that I went through from the Morphine in the hospital.

My activity is really limited because, from what I understand, now that the artificial disc is in place I have to allow bone to grow over it naturally, which creates the “Fusion” part of the procedure. If that is compromised in any way, then all of this will be for nothing and I’ll probably be in even worse shape, so it’s a long road to recovery.

Manly Monday - Simon Washbourne!

What could be more "Manly" Than talking about Barbarians?

Visionary game designer Simon Washbourne has his mind picked apart by the RPG Haven Podcast. Simon's Role playing game "Barbarians of Lemuria" is a genuine "Indy press" success. And now you have the chance to delve into the game designers mind. Its a very enlightening interview.

In fact, my only complaint is that they spend 4 minutes and thirty six seconds talking about some French guys and I only get the briefest of mentions, despite being the "other half" of the groundbreaking "Legends of Steel-Barbarians of Lemuria Edition" and an influential driving force in the Sword & Sorcery gaming renaissance.

But I digress.

And this really isn't about me is it? This is Simon's moment.

Seriously though- It's a good interview and BoL is on it's way into hard copy print and distribution to real brick and mortar game stores!

Go give it a listen.

Lazy Sunday Photodump

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