Tuesday, March 17, 2009

get it while it's hot

I'm probably just another reverberation in the echo chamber at this point, but in case you don't know Fight On! #4 is out. You will be hard-pressed to find a better value for your gaming buck in terms of sheer amount of usable stuff. Personally, I'm thrilled because my good buddy Pat illustrated a couple of monsters of mine, the Grisly Sphere and Wampler. The Grisly Sphere has got to be the creepiest homebrew critter I've ever made.

The Wampler isn't a very good monster. It's basically an intentionally lame vampire elf. But it has two (slightly) funny stories attached to it.

1) The monster is named after a local politician. When Mr. Wampler ran for office a couple years back the town was plastered with signage asking for you to elect Wampler. In my mind the name Wampler looks like a variant of wampyr a.k.a. vampire. So everytime we'd drive past a Wampler sign I would say to my wife "Beware the Wampler, it stalks in the night!" My first draft of the monster write-up even contained that line, but I eventually cut it for reasons that I don't recall now. (Note that my creation is not political satire in anyway. I don't know the guy from Adam.)

2) Space constraints forced the editor to cut the Wampler from issues #2 and #3. Getting my buddy Pat to draw the creep was a sneaky little plan to make sure Wampy got into issue four. I figured he wouldn't be able to use the illo without the creature. Normally I am incapable of the requisite craftiness required for these sorts of machinations, but this time I was able to actually devise and execute a cunning plan.

7 comments:

  1. The Creepies and Crawlies section is always a highlight! I should make sure to have new monsters in megadungeon lv6...

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  2. I was wondering where the name "Wampler" came from. I thought it might've been a more eastern european pronunciation of wampyr.

    It's a good issue.

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  3. Okay, so I'm not the only one doing that. :D Except my stuff is often political or social satire. Case in point, a whole lot of Fomalhaut.

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  4. "Beware the Wampler, it stalks the night!"

    I hope you said this in a Peter Lorre voice, 'cause that's what I would do.

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  5. Still waiting for my print copy, got the .pdf the day it came out. If you have any interest in pre-WotC D&D, Fight On! is more than worth your time.

    I was somewhat surprised to see myself acknowledged in your carousing table section!

    I mean, I certainly appreciate it, but in all honesty... considering the size of my contribution, a credit is overkill.

    Still, I do appreciate it. :) You're a class act, Jeff.

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  6. You helped me simplify the system. That's worth a lot to me. And S. John Ross taught me there's always enough credit to go around.

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  7. Thanks for helping us get the word out! We depend on the network to do that. Also, glad that we could finally find Wampy a home.

    - Ig

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