Traveller, Beta the Devil You Know, DTRPG Charity and Sales, White Star, TnT Deluxe and Inked Adventures goes sci-fi self-promotion slot

Savage September is still happening at DTRPG and RPGNow which means money off adventures, rules and supplements for the Savage World system.  Correction: "System" September - it seems to be for all sorts of different rules, inc. d20 titles. Or did Savage September become System September?  I'm not so sure now...  Also there's a charity drive for Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network (US).  > $25usd for $200usd value in titles RPG Bundle Here < (Edit: I took too long to type this and the link is no longer valid, d'oh)

Right, Traveller something old-school something something classic something science-fiction RPG, it's new, it's classic, it's rebooted, it's revised etc ...

Mongoose Publishing has
returned Traveller to us (again)
but it's an unfinished beta
playtest rules,
which you have to pay for.
?

If you're into sci-fi RPG pen and paper games and cut-price PDFs, you will not have failed to have noticed a current bestseller is the Traveller Core Rules Beta.  I enjoy reading Traveller rules for the original setting background (i.e. the Imperium cannon borne out of GDW's game of the late 70s).  For me, Marc Millers T4 Traveller, and to some extent Mongoose's earlier adaptation edition of "classic" Traveller  contextualise that setting in clear and concise terms, more so than the LBBs did.  To be fair my collection of for the original system is eclectic: a Starter Set, a bunch of LBB supplements, bits from the past, extras from Ebay, Judge's Guild guides, purchased PDFs, website wikis and a hankering to buy the complete collection from FFE.  What I'm saying is that I enjoy acquiring Traveller rules and modules, old and new, just for the love of the game and perhaps to "mine" material from all sources for the ultimate campaign using which system takes my fancy, however ...
With some many existing systems why would I want to pay for an incomplete "Beta"?  After typing the above, I realise, with irony, that maybe I'm the ideal market for Mongoose.

"Traveller Has Returned!"

No, wait, you did this before and never let it go away.

"The Beta Playtest Core Rulebook, laid out and ready to go! After many, many moons of writing and internal playtesting, this book is now ready to be seen (and commented upon!) by dedicated Traveller players. All that is missing from this PDF is a few pieces of artwork!"

I know community playtesting is a real thing, (and Oh God the secretive DnD5 playtest seemed to go on forever), but I'm still having trouble not seeing pre-release launches and community chartered kickstarters as lazy and cynical tickbox marketing, i.e. it's just how they do things now.  There's also some flaws in these approach.

Imagine, you pay for this system, a mere $20usd/£13gbp*.  Let's say you like the rules, you run a campaign, you know that you will get a reduction on the final publication (committing you to the first official print of this new edition).  But wait, there's feedback from the community as a whole, they don't like the rules you like and they are dropped some favourite content of yours from the final piece, leaving your campaign incompatible with new supplements.  But, surely, I hear you say, the final publication will not be that different, maybe they will be just a tinkering with the odd rule here and there?   Well, if that's the case, what's so very wrong with an old fashioned "errata sheet"?  Also, you must ask if Mongoose are pledging that they will support this line for as long as they have the license and won't be releasing a newer edition?

In Mongoose's defence, at least they are still selling their previous publications (I appreciate this brave new world where publishers embrace the past with pride, looking at you, Wizards').  So, is this a relaunch? Why and how is this greatly different from other systems which you can own whole volumes of at modest price?

I'm guessing that for the almost-oldies like me that this will be a curiosity purchase and maybe for new players it's a chance to start from scratch. Maybe it's a competitive response to the prolonged GDW Traveller 5 hardback kickstarter.  By the way, us non-backers of us can buy the PDF for that gem now as well ( T5 Traveller5 Core Rules Book )

Maybe I expect betas to be free and faulty, not alphas claiming to be betas.  A programmer friend had to explain the terminology to me. I guess it's snappier than "work in progress, pre-publication preview".

*I'm so broke at the moment that I'd really have to justify this to myself so I haven't bought it, even out of curiosity, yet.

White Star is finally available in print. :)

If you didn't know, White Star -White Box Science Fiction Roleplaying is an old-style of D&D intersecting with Star Wars and other space operas. Simple, fast, familiar, with blasters.

I printed the rules as an A5 booklet but it didn't turn out too well, so I’m assuming the DTRPG POD versions will be superior.
Naturally, I'm broke this week/ month, but it looks so shiny.
I still have to pay off that freighter, not to mention those bounty hunters we ran into in Milton Keynes.


A D&D Dragon Quest Game boxed set (TSR) thudded heavily onto my door mat last week.  This is a flashback to the missing years.  I didn't play D&D much in the early 1990s, I was playing mostly in the middle of the 80s. In the 90's AD&D went to 2nd edition and for the newbie players TSR brought out several introductory box sets.  Also Game Workshop (my Mecca, my dealer) by then had stopped importing RPGs.   Naturally, I've collected more games since, but one box missing from my collection was D&D Dragon Quest (not to be confused with DragonBall-Z or SPI's DragonQuest RPG). Any how, long story short, a chat in a facebook group led to me buying this shrink-wrapped gem for a song.  If you are fond of the B/X style game or want to introduce people to AD&D or AD&D2e this game is very accessible. Also it's a "complete" game system, much like boxed games such as Hero Quest, with some simplified and unlimited experience rules.  If you choose to keep playing with just this set using your own campaigns, you can.  I feel this is important to mention, since so many of the gateway boxes after BECMI (from TSR and Wizards') were deliberated hobbled to encourage purchase of the main products.  I think I had seen this set in the past and had ignored it, possibly confusing it with Dragon Strike which has that VHS tape and employs photos for PCs instead of art.  I will always will art over oily barbarian photos any day.  This is another reason to perhaps seek out D&D Dragon Quest, because it is an archive of TSR colour art, pulled together from cover and filler art from the different editions and iconic Dragonlance images.
Entry on BoardGameGeek  Review on Lost and the Damned nabble forum


The following item has but been long awaited but is now bookmarked on my shopping list:

Tunnels & Trolls Deluxe Edition is finally available as a PDF (outside of the Kickstarter) on DriveThruRPG. Currently it is $20 USD.  Like many I'm a fan of the 5th edition (plus WIZ/POW house rules), and slowly 7.5 has grown on me.  The nice thing about T&T at it's heart the same authors have kept to similar rules across the editions, but what they have done is expanded aspects and provided a wealth of background and campaign information. Curiously, it was the lack of "world" which made 5 appeal to me, which meant I could fully own the campaigns with my own creations, right down to the monsters, because of the easy to use monster rating system.  Being T&T, the bestiaries only ever resemble the Monster Manual in part and even the seasoned D&D player might not know what to expect from a T&T manticore with regards to how it's special attacks are implemented.  There's usually enough eccentricity in T&T to make a player think twice about where they actually are and what they are actually doing.  Being slightly reserved and rather serious about my tabletop fantasies I sometimes agree that some of the humour throughout the rules isn't necessary for the fun, and it's a mistake to dismiss T&T as silly and puerile, or just for solo games, in the same way that it is wrong to dismiss old D&D as TPK dungeon crawling.  In the right hands, compared with other systems, T&T has always been very powerful and fast moving imagination vehicle.  I am in no doubt that this will still be the case in T&T Deluxe.

T&T Deluxe, Flying Buffalo.

This is it! The new and improved, Deluxe Tunnels & Trolls. T&T is the second ever fantasy role playing game, and the easiest to use. This book contains everything you need to play the game solo (with the many solo adventures) or with a group of friends. Includes a lot of extra material and descriptions of the worlds played in by the designer and his friends back in the late 1970’s. 

The first 166 pages are the core rules, followed by the Elaborations section which has optional rules and systems you can pick and choose from to add to your T&T games. There is also a 16 page full color section which includes color maps of Trollworld, Khazan, Khosht and Knor along with other paintings and maps. There is a 50 page Trollworld section that includes descriptions of locations on every major continent and three cities, plus a detailed Trollworld timeline. The book also includes a solo adventure that gives you the chance to bring dead characters back to life and a GM adventure on the continent of Zorr, plus a detailed weapons glossary and much much more - over 380 pages of material. 

Note that this version of the rules does not yet have the internal links, BUT once we have that done, you will be able to download an updated copy of the PDF for no extra charge.

http://bit.ly/TnTdeluxe (DTRPG affiliate link)

Inked Adventures - recent publications...

Rugged Explorer ATV

Having tried to justify this blog by typing about a selection of games which I can barely afford by different publishers, what now follows is shameless self-promotion in order for me to raise funds for this terrible affliction that many of us suffer from, the need to game and failing that, the need to procure and collect games.

As some of you may well know I draw maps and plans for Inked Adventures.  Okay, I sort of am Inked Adventures, but I like the idea of Inked Adventures as a sort of faceless megacorporation hell-bent of world domination, ... one hand drawn product at a time!

Hinged Dungeon Doors

My business plans usually reflect this.

My accountant said that I can't have the second helicopter, not until I sell at least three more pre-print copies Compact & Worn Starship Deck Plan 6x6 Tiles.

He says that I shouldn't be giving away the ATV for free and that no-one wants easy-to-assemble Hinged Dungeon Doors on their gaming table. 

Lord knows, he says, how many Map&Dice Playing Cards I need to fence, to pay for the marble lining in my office jacuzzi.  I swear that at this level of poverty the caviar will spoil!

From the Inked Adventures site, click for more photos and descriptions
Compact & Worn Starship Deck Plan 6×6 Tiles

Rugged Explorer ATV Inked Adventures Free

Hinged Dungeon Doors $3.50 $2.50

6×6 Starship Tile Sampler: Cargo Lifter Micro Freighter Free

Compact & Worn Starship Deck Plan 6×6 Tiles $10.00 $7.50

Inked Adventures Map and Dice Playing Cards $12.00

Inked Adventures main site: http://inkedadventures.com/main
Store of DriveThruRPG: http://bit.ly/IAstore

Thanks for reading. :)
- Billiam B. Terran Date 20150923.2140

Comfort Shopping, Lego, Pathfinder and Playing at the World (Jon Peterson, Unreason Press)

I'm blogging from my iPad, so please forgive any really strange formatting and instagramaged photos (edit: gave in and moved to the laptop, much easier, but kept the instagram photos in).  A random post for random times. Miserable weather and real-life chaos have led me down strange aisles in a local supermarket recently, and budget-priced Lego is hard to resist.

Tesco supermarkets (in the UK) are clearing some of their toy lines at the moment.  Bobbing to the surface are the Lego Star Wars AT-RT (75002) at £13.50 and the LotR Lego Orc Forge (9476) for £20 - which for a supermarket isn't such a bad price at all.  This makes a change for me from buying yet more Series 9 Lego Minifigs. Collecting Series 9 has become an addiction - latest two figures were a wine waiter and another cyclops.- I now have three cyclopses, and I'm justifying keeping them for Heroica or as figures for kid-friendly proto-D&D, but that's a whole other post. I already own an earlier incarnation of the Clone Wars bipedal AT-RT walker, but this one seems more posable and I couldn't pass up the opportunity to build an evil droideka - and a Yoda minifig!

The Orc Forge from The Lord of the Rings range is a very odd set - I'm guessing that it's more fun to look at once all of the parts are moving and the fire coloured "brick lights" are turned on. Again, the gamer in me was drawn to the orc/uruk-hai figures and the tiny pieces of armour - perhaps again, subconsciously planning a dungeon crawl with Lego minifigs. ;)

Slightly more game related is the Lego Games Star Wars Battle of Hoth which I bought from Argos for £24.99. I already have a couple of the Heroica Lego Game sets and this looks simpler to play (not that the Heroica system is complicated!). I'm not sure if I should try to create a cross-over game - although the Heroica forest would make a suitable Dagobah or Yavin 4 jungle. I'm really looking forward to assembling the mini snowspeeders and AT-ATs.

For being supportive through times of outrageous fortune, my partner has yet again rewarded me with a roleplaying treat through Amazon (yes, I know, she's a "keeper").

I had initially avoided the Pathfinder Campaign Setting World Guide: The Inner Sea because I felt that core rules books should be just that, core rules. The clever marketing blurb in the Pathfinder RPG Beginner Box had finally convinced me that the Core Rules and Bestiary (1) were somehow orphaned without the campaign setting.  Also a paranoia has overcome me, I was fearing that since Pathfinder has been around for a few years, that suddenly the opportunity to buy these books new would be ushered away by a new edition. I think Wizards' must have broken me with DnD3-thru-4 and Next, because so far Paizo have been very sparing with replacement editions - a revision, here or there maybe. Nonetheless, the collector-reader in me had decided that I needed the three staple Pathfinder books whist the covers and logos still matched (-well sot of).

Content-wise The Inner Sea World Guide incredibly dense, and when it comes to atlas details, it puts the the DnD4 Faerun / FR guides I have to shame. Also the map was without a perforated edge - the collector's bane - instead, only tiny spot of cellulose glue holds the map in place - no tearing required. I like this book, every paragraph is a campaign hook in itself. It is immensely rewarding to dip into. There is both consistency and fascinating variety in the world of Golarion.  My partner also approved, because she loves new books and insisted upon sniffing the ink fresh pages (something she refuses to do with my second-hand vintage ebay purchases).

Paperback USA	Kindle US
Paperback UK	Kindle UK

Another random procurement this week, much to the disgust of same said partner, was a Kindle ebook.  As an ex-bookseller, if a tree hasn't been felled, she looks down upon these things (they certainly don't smell the same).

I haven't read deep into Playing at the World by Jon Peterson, but so far, and from browsing through, the author seems to be very thorough with his primary source material, if not a little dry in his style.

It reads very much like a Masters degree final paper, upon the origins of D&D, RPGs, gaming group culture and terminology. Importantly, Peterson observes that it is almost impossible to re-imagine D&D's birth without modern bias due to it's iconic status, that amongst dozens of other niche games, one couldn't have assumed that it's climb was assured or a straightforward commercial success.

Flipping through, I'm not entirely sure why we need etymological sourcing of the word "Dragon", not as much as say examining the reasons behind why a game would adopt the word "Dungeon" in it's title. It's as though Peterson is proving a point to a tutor unfamiliar with the fantasy genre. In his introduction, he stresses the need for works of gaming history which draw upon contemporary publications (journals and newsletters) and not upon internet anecdotes and gaming community folklore. I partly agree, there is occasionally the need for strict academic approaches, but in terms of an entertaining read about a fun pastime, I think I prefer our many casual blog posts of reminiscence, or the personal heart-felts of geek authors like Ethan Gilsdorf and Mark Barrowcliffe.

My own attempts at trying to find books on simulation games, or complex role-based games for educational drama workshops, whist at college, was met with a single publication regarding games in business training, and I was pretty lucky to find that it a library devoted to playscripts (I did Dramatic Arts degree for my sins).  Hopefully, tomorrow's media and social studies students will have a comprehensive selection of texts about RPGs from which to quote with confidence from. Playing at the World may yet become a scholarly definitive text in citing the early history of D&D within American wargaming tabletop culture, but it ain't no nostalgic journey or rites-of-passage-with-dice-tale (like Gilsdorf's Fantasy Freaks' and Barrowcliffe's Elfish Gene).

If this book blows my mind, I'll let you know. If I never type of it again, then assume my jury is still out when it comes to my all-round recommendation. Still, it would be hard not to say that for gaming history aficionados it is an "essential" addition to a reference bibliography. Incidentally, Playing at the World was advertised in Gygax Magazine #1, so it's target audience is almost certainly old-schoolers.  We keep our dice boxes next to our walking sticks, y'know. ;)

My summary so far: Playing at the World has thorough, no-nonsense historical accounts, with a few pictures.
(But we likes pictures of old games)

Right, those Inked Adventures dungeon tiles aren't going to make themselves.  Or shall I start building the Lego?

Inked Adventures Large Tiles Preview - with Lego

Curious? More pictures here.

Don't touch my dice, kids!

 

Teach your Kids to Game Week always feels slightly evangelistic to me, especially where roleplaying games are concerned. Or somehow that RPGs are a forbidden pleasure of our generation like boxes of Star Wars Lego which needs to be smuggled past our life-partners.  Indoctrinate the new generation, we say, they know nothing of games without a screen and controller, how dormant there imaginations must be!  Poor things, we're forever forcing them to read "classics" by J.R.R.Tolkien or C.S. Lewis, or failing that, just getting them to read a book is seen as educationally noble, and if that isn't working maybe they'll find comics "quaint".  Oh God, please save the children from television and computer games (bearing in mind that some children socialise with xbox live - whilst learning co-operative team skills - it's just a shame that they are shooting terrorists - no, wait, a healthy sense of evil and good is positive, especially after Lucas confused everyone with the prequels, I mean Stormtroopers are the bad guys, right?  Okay, shush Billiam, enough about the prequels, already!)  ...Let's just put my anti-pro-book face-to-face-is-supposedly-better-than-screen cynicism aside.  RPGs are fun.  It's not a conspiracy, they're just fun. :) 

Judging by my friends on Facebook, and blogger dads, there's a very real sense of parents wanting to share the archaic, yet timeless, love of board-gaming and roleplaying with their youngest, and actually that's just dandy.   I was thinking this afternoon whether or not guided imagination / conversation-based play for very young players really need dice, cards or character sheets?  I mean let's face it, toys, maps, figures, art, general visual stimuli, should almost be compulsory - but rule systems?  But then I realised that I'd missed what is a major opportunity here for the benefits of exploring a structured universe and logical learning. No, really, it's about fun...! If a ten year old wants to learn chess, I wouldn't throw out all of the rules and put the chess pieces on a un-checkered board.  Metaphorically speaking chess is war (WAAAR!!!) - but it's a structured simulation (boriiing) - the pleasure of the victory is from applying abstract knowledge -even remembering the rules is part of beating the puzzle for learners.  Hit Points, Wounds, Stamina, Endurance are an excellent way of representing (and abstracting) how far the player should imagine themselves as being from the threat of the near-miss/fall/fail/death situation and this inspires thrill (well, dur, Billiam).  

Let's say your kid's Superman character has a whopping 100 (one-huuuuun-dred) HP and normal punches only hurt him for 1 HP and bullets cause 4 damage (let's say puny humans have 2-6 hps) ... and he regenerates damage (or shock or whatever) every round.  There doesn't seem much point rolling the dice and writing down the numbers, but, no wait, kryptonite multiplies everything by 20.  A K-bullet from Lex Luthor's Astro-gun can cause 80 points of damage.  Blam! Wowzers, must get out of the way and now!  Suddenly there's a parameter or limit - the world gets gravity.  Those numbers, those dice, they do stuff. 

Maybe your system is just a success or fail on a six-sided die - so when your players find +1 magic swords, those swords become almost solid because maths and dice are the gravity and physics of the magic "if".  But hey, if you roleplay, you already know this, what might be just as important is the fact that learning new rules can be a skill in itself. 

I have a terrible attention span (Look, Goober Fish!).  Lord knows how I ever learnt any game rules.  In fact, thinking back, my own family rarely played boardgames, especially those which had little pamphlets where you looked up rules.  My entrance into gaming was through Fighting Fantasy gamebooks, the Hawk the Slayer movie etc.  So my approach as a DM to D&D Basic and Tunnels & Trolls was all about how I could make those rules fit the narrative.  If I'd been a player-character more I probably would have been a lot sharper on which spells and skills are more effective in different situations.  

Like it or not, I am coming to accept that I'll always be a sort of B-movie fantasist over being a metagaming strategist (with rules "edge").  How you like your games and why you play with a certain system will always have a profound effect on those first games, no matter what the age of the player. 

I'm often drawn to rule systems which are classed as "introductory" or being for younger players.  I like something which appears complete rules-wise and yet is simple enough to convey in one game sitting.  I think I favour story-telling, but in the "old school" sense.  The story just happens - the rules of world are set - magic zaps, swords hurt, but after that your character can talk to anyone in the town before visiting the dungeon and at least be nudged towards a main quest.  You discover your flaws, maybe there's a backstory, but it's flexible.  By which, I don't mean an open sandbox hex-crawl -ye god's- I like to have very solid buildings and dungeons to roll about in - and following this line of thinking, I'm guessing that it's better to set scene in a way that your young players have to instantly react: Trolls! Run away? Cast spell? Talk?  Scream? Hide? 

I think what I'm getting at is that if I was to play games with youngsters or even just novices, I'd definitely need game structure - at least a map to retain focus.  There has to be a very simple, consistent task resolution system - but nothing too patronising, and maybe it emulate the system that the kids know you like - i.e. if they see you play D&D, at least use a d20 in your scaled down version of the game, let them play with the funny shaped dice.  Lord knows how I'd play a game like Wrath of Ashardalon with 6 year olds, but then I could always adapt the Lego Heroica rules...  The trick with kids and roleplaying games is defining how they should be different from children just freeform playing.  I see roleplaying as more passive-"reactive" than free-form play - the player-characters push creatively against the challenges set by the Dungeon Master.  Perhaps presenting a game as a story or film may at least explain why the players have to stay in the same one role throughout.  Again, this all depends upon the type of game - if there's a board and figures - moving the Barbarian figure is a pretty good way of reminding the player to talk like a Barbarian if your game has situations where characters get to talk.  And, hey, if the player wants to trade with the orcs, let them talk and trade.

I'm guessing that learning from an actual rulebook for older kids must have positive effects in terms of it being fun "text-book" and being comfortable with reference books has to be a really useful life-skill.  Just using an index must seem really strange to the Google-Wikipedia generation.

Okay, enough of this unfocussed babble.  On an end note I was really bowled-over to have my attention brought to this and other pictures (from here) on Rab's Geekly Digest.  The author is working on a fair few projects, I am delighted to say that this home-rules game with his children is using my Inked Adventures dungeon sections.

Excellent. :)

So, whoever your playing this week, no matter what age, I hope it's filled with imagination and cool looking props (toys?).

Lego at 80! Fantasy Lego on the Gaming Table

Lego Vikings -
a 100x100 gif made
by me to signify
Danish plunder
of my wallet

Happy Birthday you colourful bricks of pain!

Away from the role-playing games, map art and the odd gadget, my other major geek turn-on is Lego.

I have an aStore page given over to Lego -mainly packed with Star Wars Lego, it needs seriously updating - but it's fun to flip through.  There's a few posts on this blog about Lego as well: Lego tags 

So I clearly feel comfortable talking about Lego with fellow tabletop gamers. ;)  It's because gamers understand the hobbyist obsessions, the impulse buys and the devotion to an underground religion....

Lego on a scanner?  It must have been slow afternoon.
(Tha'ts Luke head in there btw)

About fifteen years ago I got back into buying and playing with Lego.  A Lego Star Wars product hypnotised me - a very chunky snowspeeder with Luke and Dak figures.  I don't have all that many sets now, partly because storage is often an issue, but every once in the while film franchise products catch my eye - like Indiana Jones on a motorcycle (I'm not like a proper collector, but the addiction comes in waves/seasons - a handful of I-should-know-better purchases).

When I was a kid I was really into the Space Lego range, but Lego must have been around since my earliest childhood because I seem to remember playing with Lego small two part people and minifigs being an exciting revolution in Lego which older friends and adults disapproved of (pft, therer were models which were practically already made!).  I didn't have much technical Lego - which seemed to appeal more to the sorts of parents thought Mechano would train their kids to be engineers. Incidentally, my brother who has severe learning difficulties enjoys holding Duplo (large) Lego pieces - it's the satisfying click they make when they are pushed together, I reckon.

I'll be honest - I like "playing" with Lego - I don't mind mixing sets up.  Sometimes it's nice to have a particular model on display for a while, but I think the child in me loves rifling through the plastic rubble.  But then I'm an easily distracted "dabbler" - I certainly don't have the focus to stick to just classic Star Wars models or to save up for the bigger sets- but I do have my preferences.

The most recent generation of "Castle" Lego had some fantasy green-skinned warriors who looked rather orc like - I bought a catapult cart driven by a bearded chap (a dwarf?) - little did I know that this might be the forerunner to the new Lord of the Rings and Hobbit Lego products.

This is where it all comes together.  LotR Lego makes me think of BrickQuest. With Moria and Helm's Deep it might be possible to build dungeons for gaming  like those in BrickQuest.   This was fantasy roleplaying with Lego figures - character sheets being a flat piece with a small bricks for hit points - inspired!

BrickQuest!!  brickquest.com

Herioca as elements of BrickQuest but it's on a mercifully smaller scale (unfortunately this means the figures have no arms).  The modular rooms and clearings remind me and others of Warhammer Quest and Advanced HeroQuest (the board game - not the RQ descendant).  Trying to make Lego and fantasy roleplaying feels like the romantic match-making of two friends - it has it's risks - i.e. your gaming group may never take you seriously again, or your child might wonder why you've made playing with Lego into a maths lesson.  If you're a parent you probably have almost nothing to in terms of the education and imagination of your children by forcing them to play a guided quest using Lego.  D&D plus Lego ticks so many boxes for me that the only worries are to do with price and your players building stuff when they should be concentrating on the game.

A lot of my money has been sent to Denmark over the years. Not since the Viking Invasions has some much of our wealth gone to that small country.

From Bricks to Bothans and the nostalgia imbued Lego Shop on Facebook there's a plethora of great Lego sites out there.  (And I didn't even mention the highly entertaining computer games!)

A big happy birthday and thank you to Lego for entertaining me (and robbing me) for years and possibly many years to come! :)

---

 The Shopping Bit: 

Lego -Film and TV Themes on Amazon - including Star Wars, Marvel, Harry Potter

Heroica Lego on Amazon UK:

See also the Official Lego Site

Lord of the Rings LEGO

EDIT: Since composing this post Forbidden Planet seem to be hiding the LotR Lego WTF!  Sheesh.  I will still share - even if some of the links are null and void.  Shopping FAIL!

My good friend Mortis drew my attention to this, Forbidden Planet (uk) are now selling and taking pre-orders on a selection of Lord of The Rings LEGO sets. 

You'll find some of these sets on Amazon too (although I was struggling to locate them today on the UK site), so some of the links here are to Amazon proper / US.

I'm trying to break my addiction to Star Wars Lego, so I'm a little torn by all of this.  I mean it's all just so perfect for D&D type games!  

Attack on Weathertop
at Forbidden Planet

Lord of the Rings: The Mines of Moria Forbidden Planet

If you're having trouble with the links use the widget thingy on the right.

No doubt that if you're in the UK, by the time you read this, Amazon UK will have updated their lists - one of the best places to look will be here: Lego Store on UK Amazon Films and Tie-ins (also good for Star Wars Lego).

Curse those Danes!  Taking our money...!  It's the Viking invasion all over again!
They will conquer us all ... one brick at a time ...

Hot off the altar ... CoC Wasted Land Jan 30th 2012 ... LotR Lego

Ooh shiny baubles ...
....New Screenshots of Call of Cthulhu Wasted Land for iPhone, iPad, Android...

./START/..
... Telegram from Red Wasp Design:

'Call of Cthulhu: The Wasted Land' Screenshots HD Released,

Launch Date Announced as 30^th January 2012

After much chanting and summoning of dark forces, indie developer Red Wasp Design today announced that the stars will be right for the release of Call of Cthulhu: The Wasted Land on the 30^th January 2012. To seal this pact with expectant gamers they have accompanied the date announcement with a slew of never-before released High-Definition images.

Call of Cthulhu: The Wasted Land is a turn-based strategy RPG based around the works of cult horror writer H.P.Lovecraft. The game is set in the midst of the First World War and pits a team of soldiers and investigators against an insidious cult intent on using the slaughter of the Great War to open the doors to an invasion of eldritch horrors.

Announced in May this year and set to launch initially on iPhone and iPod (both SD and HD versions), Red Wasp Design then later plan to infect other platforms such as iPad, Android, PC and consoles with their World War One themed turn-based strategy horror. The game has been developed in co-operation with Chaosium, the purveyors of the cult horror role playing game based on Lovecraft's work, Call of Cthulhu. The much loved RPG marked it's 30th year of publication in 2011 and continues to grow in scope and reputation.

Red Wasp Design can also be followed on Facebook, Twitter (@redwaspdesign) and on their site at redwaspdesign.com
.../END/..

LEGO of the RINGS

Lego Frodo and his
massive ring

Random "Other News":

Facebook and the blogs this week are alive with curious excitement over Lego acquiring the rights to make models (and games?) of the Lord of the Rings Trilogy and The Hobbit(s).

Prior to this epic announcement, there's been some amazing Lego fan constructions of scenes from LotR, it'll be hard to see the Danish brick builders' own sets top those. ;)

Lego has flirted with the fantasy-medieval genre in the past and currently, but maybe new Lego sets will bring us more weapons and fantasy garbs for our minifigs!  Maybe Legolas and Gimli can be imported to our Heroica Sets ... ooh the possibilities!

BrickQuest!!  brickquest.com

Of course it would be wrong here not to mention BrickQuest.  :)  I mean your Lego D&D games may be greatly improved by official LotR merchandise!

Whilst you're on the Lego site check out the "Lego Universe to Close" Press Release.  Apparently the kids didn't have access to Dad's credit card, after all. ;)

(No wait, I shouldn't make assumptions about age groups - especially rereading my last paragraph)

 

Happy reading, gaming, collecting, playing! :)

Teach Your Kids to Game Week randomthoughtsonintergenerationalgaming

I might be a week late here, but Teach Your Kids to Game Week is a really nice idea - the link will take you to appropriately child-friendly products on DriveThru.

Looking through the strange selection of games presented on DriveThru, I have three, not quite related, thoughts:

1. a kid themed or "soft" setting game may not be the answer to getting the kids hooked (see below) ;
2. why not play Lego Heroica? ;
3. I want to steal other people's children to play the Dungeon! boardgame with me.

As I decelerate into my fifth decade of life, it seems to be blind fate, that has procured me with a nil chance to spawn little ones upon which I can project my joys, fears, prejudices and/or personality shortcomings.  No Frankensteinian experiments for me!  No pitter-patter of little geeky stormtrooper feet. ;)

Back when I first played Dungeons & Dragons, it was coming in for a lot of flack (early 80s), and that was way before Pokemon cards hit the playgrounds and were clearly of a much more straight-forward evil.  As a young teenager, I defended D&D for it's cultural and educational value (but you also have to remember that nearly all children-to-teens know that citing anything as "educational" was a sure way of getting Santa to deliver).  I thought I was fighting for the misunderstood underdog.  According to me, D&D had made me a genius in Maths, English and History, inspired me to notice geology, nature and architecture, to draw, and later, to express and be loud in drama. I would bat aside myths of spell casting witchery and heavy-metal Satanism.  Although no-one was actually hunting role-players, an ominous threat was ever present, because my parents would absorb misinformation, like the mindless sponges I thought they were, and they could act fast: dining table hosting of games could be revoked at the last minute, I could become grounded, with friends turned away at the door. Perhaps, thinking back I had defended the hobby like an angry paranoid drug addict - seeing conspiracy at every turn, if only people understood, they wouldn't want to deprive me of the magic.

A friend's mother had rung my mother and suggested that they should organise a tennis club, specifically for their children who were playing this sinister game.  In all of this fresh air and racket wielding was just a hint of clean Christian fun, which would mould us into well-balanced morally grounded sin-free pre-adults.  I think my mum was not entirely convinced and had probably encountered this type of busy-body before.  She laughed it off, and perhaps realised that her clumsy PE-hating boy might find tennis just a little too healthy.  (Side note: as a youngster, I'd attended the Scouts once, but it was on the same night as Blake's 7, and missing one episode was enough for me).

When some teen problems later occurred, I was banned from reading my RPG rulebooks, and stopped from going to games, but this may have had more to do with the mistaken belief that if I had nothing to do in my spare time I would choose to revise for exams. Hmm. Naturally. Anyhow. "Maybe the depression will go away dear, if we deprive you of familiar things you like..."   That was you-don't-understand-me teen stuff vs. protective parent logic (perhaps now it's all about the confiscation of knives, hoodies, I-pods and blocking Live-play MSN- "Aw, Mum! I HATE you!" etc.).

I think we're originally talking about child gamers here, not teenagers, ....  I think the point I'd planned to get to was that it seems so strange that it's the parents who are trying to sell role-playing games as a concept to the children (and not the other way around) especially if they're pushing those archaic styles of play with the pencils, paper sheets, coloured dice and combat matrix reading.  "Sorry, Dad, I just want to finish my homework on the iPad. Can't mum play with you?  She understands all that old stuff with the dusty boxes and the smelly books." 

I mean, is it possible to talk to kids about RPGs without describing it as "World of Warcraft before graphics cards and consoles"?  Am I the only one thinking that suddenly tabletop RPGs sound like those jokes about grandparents having no toys apart from a piece of coal, a tangerine and a wooden horse (and the tangerine had gone off)? It's all true, before 1965, all of the world was in black and white, and toys were basically whittled figurines - now mistaken as religious fertility symbols.  At 12 you started an apprenticeship in an underground steel mill or had a baby and most of your childhood games were actually variations of how to avoid being beaten by the parents, relatives or neighbours, because in those days you were allowed to hit other peoples kids and it was expected of you and you could leave your doors unlocked and no-one would steal anything except foreigners who couldn't be trusted because they were foreign and didn't understand our honest ways etc.  It's all true, believe me, no really, ask yer dad.

A three year old showed me how to play on a Wii the other day.  Naturally, I had to defeat her at  ten-pin bowling and table tennis (just to prove a point).  Okay, she beat me at some sort of frisbee game - the one with the manic happy-then-sad dog.  I mean, even wires on consoles must look exotic and retro to these kids.  I'm still impressed about the Talisman board being in colour!

Perhaps this our chance to rewrite history and claim that D&D was played with chalk and blackboard slates.  throw in some marbles and a tin soldiers, perhaps a spining top, and it's all good wholesome Victorian fun for all the family (Sunday fun before Papa had to go back down t' pit and Mama had finish washing rags outside the Workhouse...).

It's really great to read about a new generation of gamers bonding with parents in this way.  Maybe we're like the hobby-railway enthusiasts, or scaletrix drivers. letting the children into the attic, showing them the diorama and controls - but don't touch that button, only daddies are allowed to touch that.  I'm pretty sure that dedicated Lego hobbyists are pretty strict with which sets they let the kids play with. Our "inner child" vs. the real child.  Get out, haven't you got texts to send?

Unless I was gaming with very young children I think I'd avoid child-like settings, perhaps this is because it brings me back to my own childhood where I despise the cuter characters and child protagonists - I identified with archtypal grown-up heroes (or at least teenage heroes).  I liked my fantasy to be played straight and absorbing.  Hawk the Slayer and Krull, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Star Wars were infinitely preferable to Neverending Story, The Goonies and Caravan of Courage An Ewok Adventure.  As an adult I really like the kids in ET, and I think I buy in to the idea of "family" movies better than I used to.  Mum once once described the Doctor's assistant Leela as "something for the dads to watch" - I must ask her why she watched Doctor Who - I think it was to do with plot solving and mild scary peril, judging by the sort of programmes she likes now.   Okay, I've gone off the point.  The question is, if your kids want to play muscle black magic dealing killers, can you cope with that, or is My Little Pony with some numbers more the sort of thing the kids should be playing?

Random aside: if you're into the psychology of children relating to heroes in fairy tales I recommend dipping into Bruno Bettelheim's The Uses of Enchantment  which blew my mind just a little at college and led to the devising of the dubiously titled Edinburgh Festival play "Grimm Realities".  But that was another life, and we shall never speak of this again.

Well, sonny, back in them days, we's had what some folks called "nuclear"
families.  Thems were bad news when they played them boredom-games together,
as it led to explosive argy-ments and nuclear fallings-out.  Then, after
Chez-Noble, the UN banned the boredom games and we wuz all told
to sun-scribe to only-lined video games like Wally Warcraft. 
And we was grateful for the 'Warcraft too.  We didn't have to talk to
folks  no more. Well, not to folks we wuz gene-related to.
And we could play any-time, -not just at Christmas. ...

I'm pretty sure I really know nothing on the subject of inter-generational gameplay, and I have never been forced to weigh up educational merits verses fun, or justify the moral abandonment of stealing tomb treasure being "okay" because "it's a goal related reward".  Only recently I was struck very hard in the face with the idea that many games (or at least the ones I truly enjoy) are nakedly capitalistic on so many levels.  Competition, wealth acquisition, renown and power. (I love it)  Which, incidentally, was part of the inspiration of the title of this blog.  Of course there's that bit where you have to share the wealth with others in the party, but it's done with a begrudging attitude and the glaring subtext of "I could just kill you now and take your share". Would I worry about navigating these moral minefields? I mean I struggle at work daily, trying to avoid being sacked because I think some words and ideas are very funny, whilst the rest of the grown-up world seems to I'm being some sort of an unprofessional monster (at this point I want to pretend to you that I'm actually primary school teacher... but that would be lying and the judges told me that it would never happen... actually the truth is in fact much scarier...)

Anyhow, I suspect this is probably what I'd be like as a dad playing games with his sons:


(Fast Show - Competitive Dad - http://youtu.be/0MigZFRWYHg )

Educational merits (or worries) aside, perhaps it's just important to "have fun" - which reminds me of that immortal D&D/RPG ethos that there are no winners or losers, because you "win" by having fun.  Cheesy, yes, but curiously applicable to all forms of creative play.

Anyhow, gamer-parents, I salute you!

To sign off, I especially liked this entry on Daddy Grognard.

Teach Your Kids to Game Week - on DriveThruRPG - with links to Facebook news and groups.

Knights of Doom and Heroica Waldurk

Fighting Fantasy treats from Daddy Ebay.

I just wanted to share some totally random shopping news. For phenomenally cheaper prices than they seem to be worth, I have two recent ebay acquisitions: Fighting Fantasy Books "Knights of Doom" (1994, 1st print, Puffin, Book 56) and "Tower of Destruction" (1991, 3rd print). These are for my personal collection which is still surprising light when it comes to the 40s and 50+ numbers. I bought them at fairly average prices, well under a fiver each and yet I've battled for Knights of Doom in the past which has been known to get well above 20GBP in bid wars. So I'm very happy. What's interesting is that neither book had a photo and one was listed as buy-it-now only.  So there was a little faith required here.  And you know the really good news? ... There's not a single mark on either Adventure Sheet. If times get really hard you'll probably see these books again. ;) 

Those pesky Danes - Lego with Dice!

I've just this from a local shop.  It lies unopened, teasing me. :)  They didn't have Castle Fortaan - the larger of the Heroica game sets, so that may just have to be an Amazon buy, closer to Christmas.  But I also really want the Star Wars Lego Advent Calendar.  Curse those Danes!  They come over here, steal all our gold!

Click on the Castle Fortaan box (the larger one) - it'll take you to a page with a little movie - reminiscent of Hero Quest and other fantasy board games.

Heroica Lego on Amazon UK:


Wait a second - the heroes have no arms! :o

Watch this space for adventure-Lego related discoveries ....

I'm hoping Heroica is going to be a bit more sophisticated than Lego "Shave a Sheep".

Shave A Sheep!
(The Welsh version was
banned from shops)