A Brief Hiatus

Despite my best efforts to sit down and write, I'm afraid other responsibilities are eating away my time for blogging at the moment. This spring is markedly different from last year: I'm an assistant coach for two baseball teams, my son's rec league team and his travel team, plus running a extra workout each week for three All-Star candidates and scouting all the teams we don't play until late in the season so we can draft out league's All-Star team by the end of April.

On top of that, I'm handling the process for incorporating my son's travel team as a 501(c)3, which includes paperwork for the Secretary of State, the Franchise Tax Board, and the IRS, drafting bylaws and a budget, creating a website, and lining up potential donors. With tournament fees, insurance, uniforms and other equipment, and promotions, it's costing the parents collectively over $10,000.00 a year for the boys to play, and our goal is to defray a significant portion of that through sponsorship.

I certainly haven't run out of things to blog about - in fact, my queue of half-written posts hovers right around fifty at the moment, including two new event tables, non-player character-specific Advantages and Secrets, and a 'village of Hommlet' for swashbucklers drawn from a Kids of Carcasonne game board. I'm really excited to put all of this out to y'all, but right now my personal free time is consumed by America's Pastime.

There may be a few sporadic posts here and there: I still want to get a couple of posts up for The Queen's Cavaliers, and if I finish something in a quiet moment, I won't hold off on posting it, but I also don't want to race to turn out crap just to keep a schedule. It's better to step back for a bit.

So, RBE is going deep and quiet probably until the end of April - hopefully the incorporation paperwork will be complete by then, All-Star selections will be made, and my extra workout each week will be replaced by someone else's actual practice.

Thanks for being patient, and I hope you'll continue to stick around.

I'll conclude with a quick (and true) anecdote from last week.

My son and I were on our way to the batting cages at his field to warm-up for his game that day, and he asked me, "Daddy, what's 'play ball'?"

"The two most beautiful words in the English language, son," I replied.

Thanks again.

Wednesday Wyeth

Photobucket Crap-Out? Solved!

Browser compatability.

Good grief.

Blogging about pretending to be a swashbuckler shall resume shortly.

The Pen and the Sword: Twenty Years After

The Swiss became as purple as a peony. He wore his elegant uniform, D'Artagnan was wrapped in a sort of gray cloak; the Swiss was six feet high, D'Artagnan was hardly more than five; the Swiss considered himself on his own ground and regarded D'Artagnan as an intruder.

"Will you go away from here?" demanded the Swiss, stamping violently, like a man who begins to be seriously angry.

"I? By no means!" said D'Artagnan.

"Some one must go for help," said a lad, who could not comprehend that this little man should make a stand against that other man, who was so large.

D'Artagnan, with a sudden accession of wrath, seized the lad by the ear and led him apart, with the injunction:

"Stay you where you are and don't you stir, or I will pull this ear off. As for you, illustrious descendant of William Tell, you will straightway get together your clothes which are in my room and which annoy me, and go out quickly to another lodging."

The Swiss began to laugh boisterously. "I go out?" he said. "And why?"

"Ah, very well!" said D'Artagnan; "I see that you understand French. Come then, and take a turn with me and I will explain."

The hostess, who knew D'Artagnan's skill with the sword, began to weep and tear her hair. D'Artagnan turned toward her, saying, "Then send him away, madame."

"Pooh!" said the Swiss, who had needed a little time to take in D'Artagnan's proposal, "pooh! who are you, in the first place, to ask me to take a turn with you?"

"I am lieutenant in his majesty's musketeers," said D'Artagnan, "and consequently your superior in everything; only, as the question now is not of rank, but of quarters--you know the custom--come and seek for yours; the first to return will recover his chamber."

D'Artagnan led away the Swiss in spite of lamentations on the part of the hostess, who in reality found her heart inclining toward her former lover, though she would not have been sorry to give a lesson to that haughty musketeer who had affronted her by the refusal of her hand.

It was night when the two adversaries reached the field of battle. D'Artagnan politely begged the Swiss to yield to him the disputed chamber; the Swiss refused by shaking his head, and drew his sword.

"Then you will lie here," said D'Artagnan. "It is a wretched bed, but that is not my fault, and it is you who have chosen it." With these words he drew in his turn and crossed swords with his adversary.

He had to contend against a strong wrist, but his agility was superior to all force. The Swiss received two wounds and was not aware of it, by reason of the cold; but suddenly feebleness, occasioned by loss of blood, obliged him to sit down.

"There!" said: D'Artagnan, "what did I tell you? Fortunately, you won't be laid up more than a fortnight. Remain here and I will send you your clothes by the boy. Good-by! Oh, by the way, you'd better take lodging in the Rue Montorgueil at the Chat Qui Pelote. You will be well fed there, if the hostess remains the same. Adieu."

Thereupon he returned in a lively mood to his room and sent to the Swiss the things that belonged to him. The boy found him sitting where D'Artagnan had left him, still overwhelmed by the coolness of his adversary.

The boy, the hostess, and all the house had the same regard for D'Artagnan that one would have for Hercules should he return to earth to repeat his twelve labors.

But when he was alone with the hostess he said: "Now, pretty Madeleine, you know the difference between a Swiss and a gentleman. . . ."

- Alexandre Dumas, Twenty Years After

Letters from Isabel, Redux

Jedediah at Book Scorpion's Lair channels a little Ricky Nelson for the latest installment in the continuing adventures of Marcelo and friends.

This whole campaign is awash in swashbucklery goodness, and I'm so glad that Jedediah is posting them as a resource for the rest of us - I have to add that I really enjoy the personal letter format as well; I like Marcelo's voice as a correspondent.

DVR Alert

For the third time this year - so far! - TCM will show The Mark of Zorro, with Tyrone Power and Basil Rathbone, on Saturday, 16 March. J. Edward Bromberg as Don Luis and Gale Sondergaard as his wife are comedic and menacing by turns - they are great templates for non-player characters in a cape-and-sword roleplaying game.

Check you local listings for times.

No Wednesday Wyeth Today - Thanks, Photobucket!

Photobucket's crapped the sheets.

None of my existing images seem to be affected - so far - but logging into my account gives me an empty library and no way to upload anything. Yesterday, no problem - today, ghost town.

The thing that is most worrisome is the only help I could access was a blog post which suggested sending a whole bunch of personal informaiton to a web address - full name, date of birth, any and all emails under which my account might be affiliated, &c. Sounds like a total phishing scam.

If Photobucket craps out on me altogether, I'm really deep in it - almost all of the images on both RBE and my Obsidian Portal wiki are housed on Photobucket.

This sucks.

OSR v. osr: A Reply to Erik Tenkar

Yesterday, Erik Tenkar posed the question, how inclusive is the OSR? Is it specific to D&D, or is it a tent under which all 'old school games' - and there's a slippery phrase in itself - should be covered?

I normally steer clear of these discussions here as they don't really pertain to RBE - Backswords & Bucklers is really the only OSR game to receive regular mention - but it's something that I've addressed a number of times on different discussion forums, so please forgive me for indulging in a bit of meta today.

For my part, I make a distinction - and by no means does everyone agree with that distinction - between the O[ld] S[school] R[enaissance], which is publishing retro-clones of pre-3e D&D and associated adventure modules, settings, and supplements, and an o[ld] s[chool] r[enaissance], which is a general renewal of interest in playing games from roughly the first decade of the roleplaying game hobby.

The OSR began as an effort to get new 1e AD&D modules on gaming store shelves by using the d20 SRD to create a cloned 1e rulebook - OSRIC - that publishers could reference instead of AD&D, allowing them to skirt copyright issues. With hundreds of products released since OSRIC became available, returning beer money and pride of accomplishment to their creators, it proved to more successful at what it set out to do than I think most of the gamers who put it together imagined.

Soon, gamers decided to clone the other editions, for a mix of reasons - sometimes they simply liked the other TSR-era versions of D&D better, sometimes as a vanity thing, in my experience. Soon there were clones for just about all of the different versions of the D&D rules published by TSR - most prominently Swords & Wizardry and Labyrinth Lord - yet most of them weren't 'true' clones, in that the author's editorial voice was present to one degree or another, from everything to rules interpretations to adding house rules.

This is where I think it starts to get confusing for some people, I think. That inclusion of editorial voice led some gamers down the same path taken with Tékumel and Arduin, of making what was essentially campaign-specific versions of D&D. It was this 'wave' of the OSR that produced titles like AS&SH, ACKS, and LotFP as well as Carcosa.

Finally, there were those who decided to take the original rules and concepts in different directions - the OSR equivalent of Marvel's 'What If?' series - and thus they released 'clones' like Stars Without Number for sci-fi space adventures, Mutant Futures for post-apocalypse campaigns, and Flying Swordsmen for wuxia martial arts adventures.

One of the important features of all of these games is that, because they draw from the same root stock - D&D, and more specifically some variant of the SRD - they are often highly interchangeable with one another.

That, in a nutshell, is what the capital-O, capital-S, capital-R OSR is about.

At the same time this was occurring, and with some degree of mutual feedback and support, other gamers were noticing older games were still just as playable and just as fun as the stuff they could readily find on gaming-store shelves. Games like TFT and Chivalry & Sorcery popped up in discussion on rpg forums, as did Boot Hill or Champions, and with the help of second-hand retailers and eBay, they started finding their way into gamers' hands, and onto their tables, once again.

A few games never really went away. Fans of original, 'classic' Traveller were quietly humming along for years; their reprints were still available, supported by a ton of fan-created content that Marc Miller didn't attempt to stamp out the way TSR did. Call of Cthulhu and Pendragon received new editions, but remained close to their roots. GURPS was always there. Closer to home, Flashing Blades remained in print and En Garde and Maelstrom were republished, the latter with a new companion volume as well as adventures and supplements.

The presence of these games in online discussions began to grow. Awareness of availability went up. This was an old-school renaissance of a different sort, less publishing oriented and not fixated on D&D, but rather on digging up and playing older roleplaying games, discovering that once the dust was cleared away, they still held their shine. This lower case-o, lower case-s, lower case-r osr is also producing some clones of its own, like Legends of the Ancient World and Heroes & Other Worlds for TFT, FASERIP for MSH, and Classified for the James Bond RPG, but these are not OSR, which is a publishing effort specific to TSR-era D&D.

There are edge cases, as in all things. Is Castles & Crusades the first OSR retro-clone? Some say yes, others - including me - no. Is DCCRPG OSR? I don't know enough about it to have an opinion, but I know it's been argued both ways as well.

If I understand him correctly, Erik seems to argue that the OSR is the tent under which all these games fit. I think it's the other way 'round - that the OSR, the family of games with a shared D&D heritage, are part of a larger renaissance of interest in older roleplaying games. The OSR tends to get the most attention - or sucks the air out of the room, depending on your perspective - by virtue of the fact that it's derived from the World's Most Popular Roleplaying Game™, but we cannot forget the games that kept chug-chug-chugging along through the long White Wolf and Whizbros night to those which enjoyed a true renaissance after being long forgotten by all but a handful of stalwart fans.

I suppose where I most disagree with Erik is that 'all roleplaying games are D&D.' I certainly won't argue that's the perception from many outside the hobby; I don't know that there's any advantage to us accepting or adopting that label for ourselves, when it tends to maginalise the broad range of subjects, genres, and games of which the hobby is actually comprised. Erik argues that D&D is to roleplaying games what Xerox is to photocopying or Kleenex is to tissue. I believe that's self-diminishing. I would say that D&D is more like what poker is to card games: arguably the best known and probably the most visible, but nothing like the only game in town.

Backswords & Bucklers Actual Play Report

Supplanter at Big Purple posted an actual play report after running Backswords & Bucklers - the first OSR game to really capture my attention - as a pick-up game at a con. Here's a little excerpt -

Rafe calls an alert to Sondra, but has to concentrate on the fight he's in. Now Sondra knows the spies are escaping, and the spies know she knows they are escaping. They row like hell and Sondra tries to pick them off with her trusty sling. She actually manages to conk out the other bravo, and when the Spymaster himself finally seizes the oars, she even smacks him one. But she doesn't take him out before darkness swallows the little skiff. "Of course Sondra hit both of them in the dark at ever-increasing range," we agreed. "She's a Wise Woman!"

Rafe gets in a serious hit on his opponent, who has no interest in fighting to the death, so he turns on his heels and flees. Rafe chases after him. There are no explicit mechanics for attacking a fleeing but aware opponent, so I just flipped B&B's -4 penalty for attacking invisible opponents around and made it a bonus to hit. It does take two rounds before Rafe's strikes did enough damage to puncture the bravo's leather jack, so it will be that much longer until he and Sondra reunite to deal with the fleeing boat. He of course searches the corpse too, because Scoundrel.

Good times.

Check it out, both the game and the post.

The Pen and the Sword: Under the Red Robe

I played with him a little while, watching the sweat gather on his brow, and the shadow of the church tower fall deeper and deeper, like the shadow of doom, on his face. Not out of cruelty - God knows I have never erred in that direction! but because, for the first time in my life, I felt a strange reluctance to strike the blow. The curls clung to his forehead; his breath came and went in gasps; I heard the men behind me murmur, and one or two of them drop an oath; and then I slipped - slipped, and was down in a moment on my right side, my elbow striking the pavement so sharply that the arm grew numb to the wrist.

He held off. I heard a dozen voices cry, 'Now! now you have him!' But he held off. He stood back and waited with his breast heaving and his point lowered until I had risen and stood again on my guard.

'Enough! enough!' a rough voice behind me cried. 'Don't hurt the man after that.'

'On guard, sir!' I answered coldly - for he seemed to waver, and be in doubt. 'It was an accident. It shall not avail you again.'

Several voices cried 'Shame!' and one, 'You coward!' But the Englishman stepped forward, a fixed look in his blue eyes. He took his place without a word. I read in his drawn white face that he had made his mind up to the worst, and his courage so won my admiration that I would gladfully and thankfully have set one of the lookers-on — any of the lookers-on — in his place; but that could not be. So I thought of Zaton’s closed to me, of Pombal’s insult, of the sneers and slights I had long kept at sword point; and, pressing him suddenly in a heat of affected anger, I thrust strongly over his guard, which had grown feeble, and ran him through the chest.

- Under the Red Robe, Stanley J. Weyman

Graphic Novels Challenge: Samurai: Heaven and Earth, Vol. 1

As I've mentioned a number of times, my initial inspiration for running a swashbuckling campaign wasn't The Three Musketeers or Captain Blood - it was REH's "The Shadow of the Vulture," a short story set at the siege of Vienna in 1529. "TSofV" is perhaps best known as the first - and only - appearance of Red Sonya of Rogatino, a flame-haired swashbuckler who provided the inspiration for the Roy Thomas and Barry Smith's Red Sonja character in Marvel's Conan the Barbarian, but it's only one of REH's 'Oriental' historical fiction stories.

I've been an 'Orientalist' - in the traditional, pre-Edward Said sense of the word - since I was a boy, beginning with my fascination with the Arabian Nights tales, but I didn't discover REH's stories until about eight years ago, thanks to the Bison Books collection. That led me Harold Lamb's amazing Khlit the Cossack tales, which take place across with the breadth of Central Asia, in turn. So it should be no surprise that a graphic novel about a samurai at the court of Louis XIV was right in my wheelhouse.

Collected into graphic novel form in 2006, Samurai: Heaven and Hell is the story of Shiro, the eponymous samurai, and his love, Yoshiko, who's captured by Chinese invaders in 1704 and carried away, setting in motion a series of events which lead Shiro to the Sun King's court in pursuit of his love.

The artwork by Luke Ross and Jason Keith is beautifully rendered, but Ron Marz's story is flatter than a pancake. The journey from the Chinese warlord's palace to Louis' France may as well have involved teleportation, reduced to a couple of 'we need a MONTAGE!' pages of action. The nature of Shiro's quest means that character development is nearly nil - figures come and go, often dispatched at the end of Shiro's katana, without the reader knowing, or particularly caring, who they are. Things get only marginally better once the action shifts to France, where Shiro predictably battles the King's Musketeers, 'cause, y'know, one of the purposes of this whole exercise was clearly to show how a katana-swinging samurai is a match for any number of broadsword-wielding musketeers.

Yes, the story falls into the familiar and predictable trope of venerating the cult of the samurai and his katana. While not wallowing in excess - Shiro doesn't, say, cut a carriage in half or deflect bullets with his sword, thank goodness - it's still a depressing exercise in round-eye otaku.

Shiro's quest continues in volume 2 . . . to be continued . . .

DVR Alert

This Saturday, 9 March, TCM shows Tyrone Power's Captain from Castile. The Michoacán locations and Lee J. Cobb's standout performance as the troubled adventurer Juan Garcia are my highlights of this epic swashbuckler.

Check your local listings for times, of course.

Wednesday Wyeth

Anything Goes!

Me: . . . [I]f you sat down to play a game of, say, swashbuckling adventure, why did you create a character who desires neither swashbuckling nor adventure?

TheBigDice: What if I want to play a Jesuit priest? Someone completely genre-appropriate. But that doesn't own a sword, has never had any training in swinging from chandeliers and has no intentions of ever personally killing a man. Of course, he's got political acumen, contacts and social skills. He's a completely functional character for the setting. He just needs a reason to adventure, a push out of the door.

Me: Then he's not genre-appropriate as a swashbuckling adventurer. He's suitable as a period-appropriate npc, not a player character.

TheBigDice: See, now we're getting somewhere. What you're actually saying is, in a swashbuckling adventure, everyone must play a swashbuckling adventurer, or the campaign isn't about what you as the GM wants it to be about. So we're not actually in a true sandbox here. It's probably got aspects in common with a sandbox, but given that you're saying no to a primarily social character in favour of action oriented ones, I wouldn't say that the "open world" ethos is really on the table. If you're unwilling to accommodate a character that talks his way out of situations rather than fights his way out of them, and aren't prepared to give what [Mike 'Old Geezer' Mornard] described as an unwilling adventurer the push the character needs, then are you really giving your players the freedom that a sandbox seems to demand?

There are things I don't write about because I know that can't do them justice.

I like forum discussions because they give me a chance to discuss games and gaming styles that I don't really understand, that are too far removed from my interests or experience for me to say anything I consider meaningful about them. While blogging as a medium works well for developing an idea, forums are a great place for asking questions.

I mention this because while I believe TheBigDice is sincere in his responses, I think the fact that he doesn't like sandbox game-worlds colors his interpretation of how they work in play, and in this instance I think it leads him to a pretty significant misapprehension.

Put simply, a sandbox game-world isn't the same thing as a kitchen-sink setting.

When I pitch my campaign, I believe I'm very clear about what it is and what it isn't: "Le Ballet de l'Acier – The Dance of Steel – is a swashbuckling adventure campaign set in 17th century France for the Flashing Blades roleplaying game. This is the age of D'Artagnan and Diego Alatriste, Gil de Berault and Percy Blakeney, Cyrano de Bergerac and the marquis de Bardelys, Lady Clarick de Winter and Madeleine de Maupin, an age of honor and intrigue, where a stout heart, a strong wrist, and cold steel could bring fortune or death."

In fact, I outlined the campaign premise before I settled on using Flashing Blades; one of the reasons I chose FB is that the chargen rules produce swashbuckling characters. It is a core conceit of the game. Sure, you can play a Jesuit priest if you like, but it's a game designed for you to play Aramis, not Fray Felipe, and that's one of the reasons I picked that particular game over the many other choices available to me.

The campaign I choose to run - the campaign I offer to interested players - is one of swashbuckling adventurers. It's a campaign which celebrates the genre; it doesn't attempt to deconstruct it. Within that core conceit, there is wide latitude. You can play a priest like Aramis, as noted above, or a courtier and saloniste in the mode of Francisco de Quevedo, or a doctor and surgeon in the style of Captain Blood or Doctor Livesey. You can play a character who is witty and attempts to use persuasion and guile to achieve his ends.

But if your first inclination on being invited to play in a game about swashbucklers is to make a character who is not a swashbuckler, then really, how engaged are you with the campaign?

A sandbox game-world isn't a featureless plain of sand. It has boundaries. It has conceits. And one of the referee's jobs is to sell those to his players, and one of the players' jobs is to accept them. There may be negotiation by all parties around those boundaries and conceits. Showing up with a character who ignores those conceits, however, and expecting the referee to acquiesce 'because SANDBOX!' reflects a fundamental lack of understanding about the way a sandbox game-world is prepared and run.

And if, as a general rule, you don't like something, you're probably not the best person to talk about how it's supposed to work.

TERCIO CREAT.IV.O's Online Store Goes Live

TERCIO CREAT.IV.O, producers of the skirmish minis game 1650, opened their online store to purchase their stunning figures.

I've been following the development of the 1650 line with interest. The sculpts are beautiful and the characters fanciful and original - something like Asmodée Edition's Helldorado line, but without the magic and monsters. My favorites so far are el Sargento (pictured at right), Irene Vioque, la Guardia, and el Mochilero.

It appears that they will ship worldwide, though there's no mention of cost - I haven't yet created an account to test the store. The figures themselves are pricey by my ridiculously cheap-ass standards, but that doesn't mean I wouldn't be willing to slap my hard-won shekels down for figures I like - it just makes me choosier.

I've dipped from the 1650 and Helldorado figure well several times for inspiration when creating non-player characters for my Flashing Blades campaign.

The Pen and the Sword: Black Vulmea's Vengeance

He set about reloading the pistol he had fired, with quick sure hands in the dark. It consumed the last grain of powder in the flask. The white men lurked like phantoms of murder about the doorway of the stair, waiting to strike suddenly and deadly. Time dragged. No sound came from above. Wentyard's imagination was at work again, picturing an invasion from the ravine, and dusky figures gliding about them, surrounding the chamber. He spoke of this and Vulmea shook his head. "When they come I'll hear them; nothing on two legs can get in here without my knowing it."

Suddenly Wentyard was aware of a dim glow pervading the ruins. The moon was rising above the cliffs. Vulmea swore. "No chance of our getting away tonight. Maybe those black dogs were waiting for the moon to come up. Go into the chamber where you slept and watch the ravine. If you see them sneaking in that way, let me know. I can take care of any that come down the stair."

Wentyard felt his flesh crawl as he made his way through those dim chambers. The moonlight glinted down through vines tangled across the broken roofs, and shadows lay thick across his path. He reached the chamber where he had slept, and where the coals of the fire still glowed dully. He started across toward the outer door when a soft sound brought him whirling around. A cry was wrenched from his throat.

Out of the darkness of a corner rose a swaying shape; a great wedge-shaped head and an arched neck were outlined against the moonlight. In one brain-staggering instant the mystery of the ruins became clear to him; he knew what had watched him with lidless eyes as he lay sleeping, and what had glided away from his door as he awoke-he knew why the Indians would not come into the ruins or mount the cliffs above them. He was face to face with the devil of the deserted city, hungry at last-and that devil was a giant anaconda!

In that moment John Wentyard experienced such fear and loathing horror as ordinarily come to men only in foul nightmares. He could not run, and after that first scream his tongue seemed frozen to his palate. Only when the hideous head darted toward him did he break free from the paralysis that engulfed him and then it was too late.

He struck at it wildly and futilely, and in an instant it had him-lapped and wrapped about with coils which were like huge cables of cold, pliant steel. He shrieked again, fighting madly against the crushing constriction-he heard the rush of Vulmea's boots-- then the pirate's pistols crashed together and he heard plainly the thud of the bullets into the great snake's body. It jerked convulsively and whipped from about him, hurling him sprawling to the floor, and then it came at Vulmea like the rush of a hurricane through the grass, its forked tongue licking in and out in the moonlight, and the noise of its hissing filling the chamber.

Vulmea avoided the battering-ram stroke of the blunt nose with a sidewise spring that would have shamed a starving jaguar, and his cutlass was a sheen in the moonlight as it hewed deep into the mighty neck. Blood spurted and the great reptile rolled and knotted, sweeping the floor and dislodging stones from the wall with its thrashing tail. Vulmea leaped high, clearing it as it lashed but Wentyard, just climbing to his feet, was struck and knocked sprawling into a corner. Vulmea was springing in again, cutlass lifted, when the monster rolled aside and fled through the inner door, with a loud rushing sound through the thick vegetation.

- "Black Vulmea's Vengeance," Robert E. Howard

Okay, This Is Fun

Paul at Quickly, Quietly, Carefully put together a random pulp adventure name generator.

Here're my results -

• The Clouds Adept
• The Gods of Zamzig
• Chitterer in Shadow
• Crystal of the Lady-Hellion
• The Lurking Dimmet
• In the Acropolis of Zib
• The Three Kings
• The Aries Gulf
• A Fiend Shall be Born
• Vampire in the Pendulum
• The Thunder Mistress
• Dusk Into Middledon
• In the Keep of Nâl
• The Tentacle of Yim-qiz
• Beneath the Cimmerian Reaches
• Cult of the Gloomy Digon
• The Gold of Yimcthu
• The Mandible of Fanâlav
• The Citadel of the Giant
• Magenta Snake
• The Omega Gulf
• Atop the Moonlit Wasteland
• Hoard of Qulgarqizav
• Dragon-Killers of Dozul
• Out of the Cassiopeia-Gulf
• In the Citadel of Aaryim
• Steading of the Crocodile
• The Stranger of the Darkling Cave
• God of Copper
• The Call of Cthuxilqul
• The Imp of Brass
• The Dungeon of Yoza'ygg

This is just crying out to be paired with the PULP-O-MIZER.

Y'know, there're actually a few of those - The Gold of Ymicthu, Hoard of Qulgarqizav, God of Copper - that would make great rumors in my Flashing Blades campaign . . .

DVR Alert

TCM ushers in March with Jose Ferrer's Oscar-winning performance in Cyrano de Bergerac Friday night - this is one of those movies fans, and gamers, of the genre shouldn't miss.

Local listings, yadda, yadda.