time for a stupid quiz

a tale of two 4e's

Every snippet of info I hear about the new edition of D&D makes me cringe just a bit. Don't get me wrong. I'm pretty confident that the folks at Wizards, especially Mike Mearls, can produce one heck of a sweet game. But I'm losing faith that they are producing a game that I want to play. The more I look at the chinese water torture that is the 4e PR machine the more I feel like ditching mainstream D&D and going this way:

Yeah, HackMaster. It's Retro Stupid. It's got all the Gygaxian Building Blocks (as brilliantly identified by Settembrini) preserved in their original form. It's overly complicated and possibly broken in some places, just like AD&D when I was a kid. See, I'm not sure I want a slick, fine-tuned, laser-precise D&D. If I want something that is slick and fine-tuned, I already have Risus. What I really want out of D&D is arguments over rules, PCs behaving badly, grotesquely absurd violence, filthy nonsensical dungeons, and lots and lots of really stupid dice charts. I want the players to try to finesse some retarded rule to weasel out of a tight spot. I even want the Monty Python jokes. Is Wizards going to give me these things? I don't know. But I'm getting the vibe that most of what I like about the game is on the chopping block as possible casualties in the name of progress.

Remember a while back when Mike Mearls "fixed" the Rust Monster? Keep in mind that of all the 3.x designers out there, Mearls is clearly my favorite. So understand that I'm not taking a swipe at the guy personally when I say that I thought Mike was fixing something that wasn't broken. The Rust Monster is supposed to ruin the fun, in just the same way that poison or level draining or failing an item save is supposed to kill your buzz.

I remember the first time a Rust Monster happened to me. I was running a fighter named Arius Claudius who ran around in uber-expensive Unearthed Arcana style Full Plate armor. Not only did I suddenly have no armor class, but thousands of GPs I had invested had just gone down the tube. I ended up beating the Rust Monster to death with the wooden haft of my trident, the three pointy bits have been rusted away as well. For the rest of his career (until that Deck of Many Things incident) ol' Arius carried a spare set of bronze platemail in a bag of holding. And a club. That's an adventure, my friends. Not "Oh noes! I almost lost my armor!" Meanwhile, HackMaster offers a world where the default assumption is that the GM is a dick and his campaign setting is actively hostile towards the players. The players are supposed to use their wits to get by and possibly prosper. Every XP and GP has to be pried from the GM's cold, dead hand. I don't usually run that kind of game, but I like that attitude as the baseline.

Maybe something will come along that will make me actively look forward to 4e. Until then, everything else is pushing me towards HackMaster as the big, crunchy system that best fits my needs. Right now, about the only things I like are that Mike Mearls is on the project and that one of the classes in named "Warlord". But I'm a sucker for anything with "War" in the title: Warforged, Warlock, Warrior, Gwar, etc. That's not a whole lot to hang one's hopes on, especially in light of the fact that every other bit of 4e material I've come across has either left me apathetic or annoyed.

Maybe my problem is that I'm not in the target demographic for 4e. At this point I actually kinda hope that's the case. The alternative is that Wizards is so missing the mark that they are driving a D&D fan of 25+ years to a competitor. A competitor, I might remind you, with a core monster "book" that runs eight volumes at $20 apiece. For them to screw up so badly as to make me look at a significantly more expensive and less popular option speaks volumes about their PR efforts.

How Traveller Helped My Career

I took a civil service test today to get a job in the university library system. The last 5 questions on the test came with a handout explaining a 5-digit system for classifying materials in the u's library system. At first it looked kinda crazy to me, but after a moment it clicked: Hot damn, this is just like a UWP!

For those of you not in the know, every world in Trav has a seven digit number that packs all the key data into a small package. This number is called the Universal World Profile. For example, if I were to say that the planet Restubuss IX has a UWP of C5558F9-9 you'd know that you were dealing with a medium-sized world that's home to a billion people living under the thumb of middling-tech space nazis.

This library classification was the same deal. So while other folks taking the test might have been scrambling to wrap their brain around the concept, I already had a working knowledge of the basic scheme. I was the first guy done with the test and out the door. I usually hate that guy, but this time I got to be that guy.

Concept Album meme

From coeli

01. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
The first article title on the page is the name of your band.
02. http://www.quotationspage.com/random.php3
The last four words of the very last quote is the title of your album.
03. http://www.flickr.com/explore/interesting/7days/ The third picture, no matter what it is, will be your album cover.
04. Use your graphics program of choice to throw them together, and post the result as a comment in this post. Also, pass it along in your own journal because it's more amusing that way.

Quote of the Day

Although the rules have been thoroughly play-tested over a period of many months, it is likely that you will eventually find some part that seems ambiguous, unanswered, or unsatisfactory. When such situation arises settle it among yourselves, record the decision in the rules book, and abide by it from then on. These rules may be treated as guide lines around which you form a game that suits you. It is always a good idea to amend the rules to allow for historical precedence or common sense -- follow the spirit of the rules rather than the letter.

-Chainmail, 3rd edition, page 8, by Gary Gygax & Jeff Perren

I love this passage because the reader is not directed to the authority of the designer nor that of any referee. The text assumes that the players are adults capable of arriving on a consensus on their own and achieving at least as useful rulings as the authors of the game.

Cinder OD&D charsheet, draft 1

A big shiny No-Prize to the first Gameblog reader who spots an unintentional omission.

Elves is weird.

I've spent the last week in a strange mixture of job hunting, taking care of my daughter, and being sick as heck. But I'm feeling better, Elizabeth should be back to school tomorrow, and I've located at least a temporary gig that started today and seems to be going well. But that's not what I want to talk about now. I want to talk about elves. I'm one of those guys that's had a love/hate relationship with D&D elves over the years. Combining fightery and magic-usification into one character has always been fun, but sometimes the pointy-eared immortals just get on my nerves. But with my present OD&D project I decided to embrace the elvitude. After all, I only have 4 PC races to choose from under my self-imposed "three original books only" rules. I feel like creatively I can't afford to give elves anything less than a fair shake. So I went on a long mental journey trying to figure out elves. And I came to the conclusion that all the greatest elves in history have one thing in common:

HATS

I'm totally serious here. Elves in my campaign are The People Who Wear Hats. That's their deal. Sure, I can tell you other details, like how the elves consider marriage to be a profession or the fact that they are the postapocalyptic descendants of a Transhuman Space style post-singularity society. But the key to understanding the elves of Cinder is that they all wear hats.

Bonus elf cheesecake:

Meet the crew

Winter War, my local con, is fast approaching. If you can come to Champaign, Illinois during the weekend of February 8-10 why not come on by and play some games? The schedule thus far is available as a pdf here and new games will no doubt be added between now and then. Heck, come and run something! For my own part I will be running two games. Sunday afternoon I'll be offering "Dragons of Ancient Days II", an OD&D event. The first time running this we laughed and had fun and people were assaulted by giant slugs, but I must admit that I did have a strong handle on the subtle differences between the original version of the Big Game and the later editions I knew better. This time I've done my homework and hopefully we can have the same loosey-goosey time without the mechanics being quite so off-the-cuff. Though if I have to choose one of the other, I'll pick silly funtimes over getting the rules right.

Saturday afternoon I'm offering the final installment of the Obiwan Shinobi Trilogy, an EC adventure set on a planet where cowboys pack lazer pistols. Here is the character art for my soon-to-be pregen PCs:

Obiwan Shinobi, elf cyaborg ninja/psi-witch.


IG-666, robodroid warlock

Obiwan Shinobi and IG-666 are repeats from the previous two installments. Obiwan Shinobi had to stay in the picture because I named the trilogy of adventures after him. IG-666 is just too awesome not to include. I considered also keeping last year's breakout star, the criminal/gigolo Hansel Manho. (Does that link lead to the first appearance of a duffel bag in EC?)

Josh just nailed the characterization of that dude. But part of the fun of running an EC event is making crazy new PCs. Maybe Hansel can headline my next adventure. The ninja jedi and the wizard droid are fun characters, but at this point I've about run them into the ground. Sometimes you just need to move on creatively, you know?


The dice led me to a Dwarf with a huge strength. God bless Warren Ellis and Stuart Immomen for providing the perfect art for a dwarvish luchadore. The website freetranslation.com tells me that "El Enano de Hierra" is Spanish for "midget of iron". Please someone let me know if that's not even close.

Kali, the female Klingon that appeared in a episode of Star Trek: The Animated Series, provides great art for disgraced Admiral Karogga, klengon psi-witch. I love the hair!
When the dice and the Race Determination chart came up with "Monster" I knew this PC had to either be a Manion Devil or Bee Girl. Google Image Search is surprisingly short on Manion Devil art. I don't normally use photos for my character art, but this cosplayer of some Kamen Rider character just totally works for Princess Sweetpollen, warlock/doxy!

The folks making the Gold Key comics version of Star Trek didn't have a lot to go on. When they started the mag they had no series bible, just a few publicity photos. Hence, disco klingons and horribly off-model Leonard Nimoy. But this panel just clicked as the art for my as-yet unnamed Klengon criminal.

Presently unnamed Frankenstein warrior. Art from the Doc Frankenstein comic that alternates between totally awesome fights with werewolves and over-the-top diatribes against religion in general/Christianity/Catholicism. More werewolf shooting, please!

Evalin 57, Frankenstein pioneer.

Now if you want to play in my EC game and none of these characters are your bag, just follow this link to my rules for bringing your own PC to my game. I'm using those same parameters for all of these characters, with the exception that Obiwan and IG's stats are previously determined.

By the way, googling for things like "bee girl", "female klingon", and "frankenstein woman" can yield some, ahem, interesting results. When searching for PC art it's almost enough to get a guy to switch SafeSearch back on. Almost.

my new favorite NPC

Remember the by-gone days of text adventure games? I played a little Zork as a kid, but was never really too much into it. I also had one where you looked for pirate treasure on a tropical island, but I can't remember the name. That one came as a cartridge that plugged into the back of my Commodore 16. It was about the only cool thing you could do with a Commodore 16. Later, the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy text game basically killed pretty much any interest I had in the genre. Damn lint.

Text adventuring may no longer have much commercial viability in this brave new era where half the videogame is a 3-D animated movie with no user interaction (I'm also playing through a J-RPG right now, can you tell?), but there's a loyal fan community still making these kinds of games. One member of that scene is S. John Ross, one of my favorite rpg designers and regular commenter here at the Gameblog. S. John has recently released Treasures of a Slaver's Kingdom, a crazy-awesome text adventure set in a corner of the Mighty Land of Vanth, the sample setting of Encounter Critical. In case you didn't know, Encounter Critical is the best pen-and-paper roleplaying game in the entire history of this or any other universe.

I started playing Treasures under the assumption that I would mess around with it a bit until I quickly remembered why I grew to dislike the format. But I'm having a blast. So far I've scored 308 out of a possible 500 points. I'm kinda stumped at the moment as to how to get the Cliff Giant to move his ass out of the way of the cave entrance he's blocking, but I haven't given up. Anyway, this post wasn't supposed to be about the whole game, just one amazing character: Gunwar.

Gunwar the dwarf is a peg-legged pirate and ex-Warrior. If even half his tall tales can be believed he's been everywhere and done everything. And he's got a great name, probably the best dwarf name since my bud Pat name his dude "Axebeard Beardaxe". Here's a brief sample of the kind of things Gunwar will talk about:

>parley with gunwar
"The real problem with all the SKY PIRANHA we've been getting lately is that they're so very good with machines."

>parley with gunwar
"... And then there was the time," says GUNWAR, "when I had to fight sixteen more of 'em in the CITY OF THUNDERS."

>parley with gunwar
GUNWAR grins. "I was never cut out fer piratin', you know, but I do so love the lingo! HAR!" The two of you exchange raucous HARS for a while.

>parley with gunwar
"... And she went on to demonstrate that she could SEDUCE anyone, regardless of species. It was the most interesting bet I ever lost, even if it cost me more than 800 GOLD CREDITS."

There is a sharp smell of ozone, and a faint electric sizzling in the air.

>parley with gunwar
You regale GUNWAR with the tale of your adventure in the SEA-MONSTER'S GULLET. He nods politely, pretending to believe you.

That "faint electric sizzling" is the vengeful Voltaic Wraith about to rudely interrupt our conversation. I attempted to USE Gunwar on the Wraith, since "Dwarf or Hobling" appears on the EC weapons charts, but it didn't work. Maybe I'll try to SEIZE him next time.

Either way, Gunwar the dwarf, I salute you.

(Man, Reaper has a figure for damn near everything!)

campaign visuals

I used to take it as a given that you had to accept the rulebook's art direction and descriptions as what your campaign looked like. 3e's dungeonpunkery helped me shake that assumption, but getting into OD&D really trashed it. I just can't work with these guys:



Okay, maybe I could work with beardy elves, but as the Goblin Defense Fund points out, everyone wore a beard back in those days. I think Barbarians were the only dudes who went about clean-shaven. But what is the deal with that orc? He looks like a mangy, scar-faced mutant. I suppose he would work well in a post-apocalyptic game, with orcs and elves and whatnot all as after-the-bomb mutants.

More importantly, for OD&D there is no art for a lot of the monsters in the core rules. What the heck does an ogre or goblin look like? With a handful of poor art and nothing for a lot of monsters, I decided just to start with a clean slate. Sure, it would be easier to just use the later D&D versions of these monsters, but the whole point of the Cinder campaign is to do my own thing, basically acting as if I had OD&D as a kid and needed to do everything from scratch. Here's what I'm working with right now:

Dwarves




Goblins
This particular Green Goblin is from a great little article here.

Yes, all the goblins tend to dress like that. This lass is back from a long night at the moonbeam farm.

Hobgoblins


Hobgoblins are basically Star Trek Andorians with polearms. Because Andorians are cool, that's why. It was some loopy medieval-type scholar who decided that the goblin and hobgoblin species were related. That's how the two races got their Common Tongue names. Like most loopy medieval-type scholars, the dude had no idea what he was talking about. But the names stuck. Goblins are actually related to orcs (see below) and dopplegangers (Skrulls).

Orcs



There's a throwaway line in the original Chainmail fantasy section about how orcs are "basically overgrown goblins". I took that idea and ran with it. Orcs are the result of alchemically and magically induced gigantism. The Sauron type in the campaign bioengineered orcs as a warrior race, starting with standard goblins. The number of orcs has grown to the point where the setting Big Bad no longer has control over all of them, but they still stick to the aggressive behaviors they were bred to produce. The orcish word for "peace" literally translates as "rest between battles".

Halflings
That's Hector the Halfling from the old Dungeons & Dragons cartoon, the only halfling to appear in the series as far as I can tell. What can I say, other than I just like the look? It's different from the standard look for the race, but not too radical a departure. And if you played D&D as a kid but hadn't read any Tolkien, you might not have much else to work with. (Though the 'tiny elves' version in Moldvay Basic is a pretty cool halfling.)

There's at least two cultural groups of halfings in the Cinder campaign. The standard pastoral halflings dress like ol' Hector up there. The others are wandering merchant types who dress like jawas (big ups to S. John Ross for smooshing hobbits and jawa into one 'hobling' race in Encounter Critical). Since the end of the Age of Robodroids, those halflings use gypsy wagons on elephants for transport.

If anyone finds this interesting, maybe I'll talk a little bit more about this stuff tomorrow. I'm kicking around two different takes on elves and maybe some reader feedback would help me sort it out.

return of Five Links

The Fate of the Terra Ariel - free Savage Worlds sci-fi one-shot by grubman

Magestrike Ultimus

Dani Bunting Berry Tribute

Heraldry Clipart - lotsa stuff badly organized

The Phrontistery - "Obscure Words and Vocabulary Resources"

The Coolest Thing I’ve Read This Week*

Beginning with Lobster Johnson vs. Black Magic (1951), most of the films start the same way. A large black car, usually driven by a woman in a black dress and veil, pulls into an unnamed town. In the back seat is an old man, or sometimes, a mummy-like corpse. As the sun sets, the old man (or corpse) magically transforms into a masked crimefighter who then usually battles aliens or Satan. In Lobster Johnson vs. the Inferno (1954), he fought both. In Lobster Johnson and the Circus of Hell (1953), he fought Death himself, and over the closing credits, Death sang a song.

That’s from “The True History of Lobster Johnson” installment found in issue #4 of Lobster Johnson: The Iron Prometheus. But don’t go scouring the video stores and such for Lobster Johnson on DVD. Author Mike Mignola is a dirty, dirty liar. I mean that in the nicest way possible. He made up the awesome character Lobster Johnson and his completely fake media history, too.

*And that’s saying something. I’ve been reading Warren Ellis and Grant Morrison, too. And a couple of neat books about heraldry.

Because, It's Midnite

My wife decided that her themesong for 2008 would be the Elvis version of the old Sinatra song "My Way". As she put it "I've never had a theme song before, but I decided I needed one." Clearly, I needed my own theme music for the Aught Eight and clearly it must make no sense. And the perfect track came to me during an encore performance in Guitar Hero Rocks the 80s.

Because, It's Midnite, by Limozeen

Walkin' the streets
I got a feelin'
It's leather-tough
You better believe it
Wakin' up late
Asleep in the gutter
Breakin' the chains! You'd better cut me some

Heart of a lion
And the wings of a bat
Because it's midnite!
Got the heart of a lion
And the wings of a bat
Because it's midnite!

Sunset Strip
California
West Hollywood
I'm gonna warn ya
Street smart soldiers
Takin' up arms
Bringin' the metal back to where it belongs!

Heart of a lion
And the wings of a bat
Because it's midnite!
Got the heart of a lion
And the wings of a bat
Because it's midnite!

{guitar/synth solo}

Liquid and leather
In equal measure
Champagne glass
Mix 'em together

Sweet city sweat
Vampire love
Crimson flows down
From the wings of a dove
Floatin' over the pavement
Guitars take flight
Wearin' my tightest pants, because it's midnite!

Heart of a lion
And the wings of a bat
Because it's midnite!
Got the heart of a lion
And the wings of a bat
Because it's midnite!

Ow! Ow! Ow!
Oooh

Traveller: Where to start

A comment to the last post asked where to get started with Traveller. We're talking about a game has had nearly as many confusingly-different editions as D&D, so there will be many different opinions on this matter. I assume (and hope) that fans of other versions will chime in here.

First, let me start by telling you what I use. My preferred ruleset is the 1981 version of Books 1-3, the slight update and reformatting of the original game. In some ways it is comparable to the Original Collector's Edition of OD&D: the differences between the original version and this update are so slight that a casual non-nitpicker will miss many of them. I also like to throw in Supplement 4: Citizens of the Imperium for added PC options. It's not necessary, but most players like to have more classes to choose from than the six in the original game.

Any serious gamer could do just fine with the rulebooks I use, but there are other equally good options. Starter Traveller was designed to be the Basic D&D of Traveller sets and I think it really hit the bulls-eye in terms of providing the most newbie-friendly Trav experience. And it features a spiffy Deitrick cover. Like my Books, this one is long out of print. CAVEAT: When buying a copy make absolutely sure the separate tables & charts sheets are intact. Most of these charts are not repeated in the rules and the game is unplayable without them.

Now, if you want to get into the Classic Traveller experience but don't want to hit the secondary market for musty old tomes from the 80's, you actually have a surprising number of very good options. Marc Miller (the number one Traveller guy, the Gygax of the scene) will sell you either awesome reprint editions or all-in-one CD-ROMs. I have the reprints of all the original Books, Adventures, and Short Adventures in three cool landscape volumes and I totally dig 'em. The Classic Traveller CD-ROM has all that stuff plus the Supplements and Games and probably some stuff I'm forgetting about, all for $35 bucks. That's seriously the best value in the hobby since the Dragon Magazine CD-ROMs from a few years back. There are collectible items on that CD-ROM that will cost you more than 35 bucks by themselves.

But the big reprints and the CD-ROM can definitely cause overload. You ever get that feeling that you received too much setting or system in a game? Traveller with all the bells and whistles can hit you with a double whammy of that sensation, as the advanced systems plus the mammoth 3rd Imperium setting can be a lot to swallow. To slim down the rules to the minimum necessary I recommend the Basic Books 1-3 Reprint available from QLI. That's the rules I use from '81 with some more modern spit and polish applied to the production values. And an alien dog man on the cover. If you want to use the 3rd Imperium setting you can do that basically for free nowadays. Just Google "Traveller Library Data" and start reading. The rabbit hole of online Traveller geekery goes as deep as you want to pursue it.

So I hope that answers the question. There are certainly other options. MegaTraveller is basically the AD&D of Traveller, as it takes a bunch of the advanced options from the original game and incorporates them into the text, along with other complicated subsystems. I'm not a fan personally but it has its adherents. Traveller: The New Era dropped the original mechanics in favor of a port of the Twilight 2000 rules and rewrote the setting as a post-apocalypse in space. It hardly looks like the same game to me. Traveller 4th Edition, a.k.a. Marc Miller's Traveller, tried to turn back the clock on the setting while offering a new resolution system. I never quite got the point of that edition but I like one or two of the supplements. If you like GURPS than I heartily recommend GURPS Traveller. If you don't like GURPS many of the supps are still awesome-tastic.

Finally, just around the corner are at least two new editions, Marc Miller's long anticipated/dreaded T5 and the Mongoose Publishing version soon due out. I stopped following development of T5 a while back when it seemed like it was going to use a resolution system similar to T4. I don't really like the T4 resolution mechanics as I understand them and much more importantly, I think a single resolution system for all actions is not the right way to run Traveller. Detractors of the original rules like to say that Classic Traveller's big flaw was lack of unified resolution mechanics. I consider that a feature, not a bug. I haven't followed Mongoose's version because at this point if I can't follow Marc Miller's lead on Traveller then I don't see much point on following anybody else. I've got the books I like and am happy to make my own way with them.

one down, forty-odd to go

So I've started dicing up a random Classic Traveller subsector, because I don't have quite enough side projects just yet. The first world on my list to flesh out is Razlfrax. It's Universal Planetary Profile (i.e. its statline) is C-100200-8. Unpacking that for the uninitiated, what we have here is a small, airless rockball with a few hundred people living in a state of anarchy. They have an average starport and tech level 8 equipment. All in all, that's not much material to work with. It's a lame little world. But since it's the first world I'm tackling for this subsector, I want to make something cool of it.

TL 8 includes laser and fusion power, so it's nothing to sneeze at. How do a couple hundred folks with no real organization above the family level maintain such tech? For that matter, how do they keep a starport operational? The easy answer here is that they don't. The starport is fully automated, with only one or two techies on hand at any given time. Good luck finding them. Imagine trying to locate two dudes in an otherwise empty O'Hare International Airport. If you want to find them odds are these guys are doing their best to stay out of view. They signed on to this job so they could play videogames all day, not to actually help people. And all the robots running the place won't help you find them. The techies have programmed them to never help travellers locate human assistance.

Since there's no local government, I decided that the starport is maintained by some interstellar power. I went with the Scout Service, which in my Traveller universe is a fully independent organization. The Scouts set up Razlfraz Starport as a waystation to facilitate Jump-1 trade from outside the subsector through to nearby worlds, particularly the high tech world Laylah. None of the local powers want to cheese off the Scouts, so they leave worlds like Razlfrax alone. That makes Razlfrax an important world for folks fleeing persecution.

A lot of refugees go through the autostarport. But not everyone who gets onto the planet is able to get off of it. Aside from the two techies, the other couple hundred permanent residents of Razlfrax are all "airport refugees" caught between flights, kinda like that guy who lived at Charles De Gaulle Airport for 16 years. Some of them just need to find working passage or a soft-touch captain who will take them on for less than a full ticket price. Other folks have nowhere else to go because none of the local worlds will take them. Better to stay on Razlfrax where you're safe from your enemies. The robots are programmed to feed anyone "waiting for a ship" in the main terminal area. The next starport over probably won't be so cushy.

So when the PCs visit Razlfrax, what will happen to them? If they own their ship or are suspected of such, they will likely be mobbed by petitioners looking to negotiate for a discount ticket. If the PCs arrive in a high jump vessel, the folks with lots of money but no local prospects will pay top credit for transport several parsecs away. Or maybe the PCs need to find someone living at the starport, perhaps someone who doesn't want to be found.

Wi+ches & Wiz_rds 5: Encounter Critical

Time to sample some more art from my old Witches & Wizards clipart CD-ROM. Today I'll be sharing material that might be inspirational for Encounter Critical. At least, I first thought of EC when I saw these pieces.


My next EC adventure will definitely feature a tribe of native robodroids.

A robot beating up another robot with a robotic club. Is there anything more beautiful in this world?

Our party consists of a robot, a space ranger, and... Wonder Woman?

BONUS BEE GIRL!

This isn't from my CD-ROM, but every right thinking EC fan loves Bee Girls. Believe it or not, I was actually trying to google up a picture of Frankenstein dressed as a pirate when this came up.

pretty cool

This month's issue of Knights of the Dinner Table feature a cover where the one and only Erol Otus does an homage to himself. Not many artists can get away with something like that. And if you turn to page 65 you'll find that Kenneth Newquist's 'Summon Web Scryer' column covers gaming blogs this month. Zachary, the Doc, and I all get mentions. So if you're new here thanks to Mr. Newquist's article, welcome to the ol' Gameblog. We've got both kinds of roleplaying here: dungeons and dragons!

Crap, I nearly forgot to thank Kathleen and her bud Doug for pointing out this issue to me. I only get KoDT now and again and this issue would have otherwise blown right past me.