Missing Tomes of Doom

Most Robert E. Howard fans in my generation cut their teeth on the Ace editions of the 12-volume Conan collection, the ones that included the superb Frazetta covers. Purists these days sometimes turn their nose up at these Conan paperbacks. The original pulps are much more valuable to collectors and the newer editions have excised the de Camp/Carter alterations to REH's work. But I treasure my Ace editions. I was cleaning up my game room a bit and reorganizing my trashy paperback section when I discovered that I own only nine of the 12 Conan volumes. I know I read all 12 as a lad, but apparently I borrowed my friend David's copies of volumes 6 through 8. So yesterday over lunch I ran over to the two downtown bookstores. No luck in nabbing more Conan, but I didn't come back to the office empty-handed. Main Street Books had some stuff and unlike most of my encounters with them, it wasn't all horribly overpriced. I got Perry Rhodan #1: Enterprise Stardust and Fritz Lieber's Ill Met in Lankhmar each for a buck! And my search for Howard stories was not completely in vain, as they had Black Vulmea's Vengeance, an age-of-sail pirate yarn by REH, for a meager sum. I haven't read Vulmea yet, but I have no doubt that Howard plus pirates equals awesomeness. I almost bought John Boorman's novelization of Zardoz, but that would have put my total in the range when I no longer consider it an impulse buy. Maybe next time.

3 Quick Feats

Big Boned
Prerequisite: Human, Half-orc, Gnome, or Halfling; 1st level only
Benefit: The character is at the absolute largest size for a member of his or her race. Big Boned members of medium races are actually Large size. Big Boned members of small races are actually Medium size.
Special: A character cannot take both Big Boned and Wee Git.

Wee Git
Prerequisite: Human, Elf, Dwarf, Gnome, or Halfling; 1st level only
Benefit: The character is at the absolute smallest size for a member of his or her race. Wee git members of medium races are actually Small size. Wee Git members of small races are actually Tiny size.
Special: A character cannot take both Big Boned and Wee Git.

Size Doesn't Matter
Prerequisite: Big Boned or Wee Git, Escape Artist 10 ranks
Benefit: Characters with this feat may switch between two size categories as needs dictate. They may use Big Boned or Wee Git when it is to their advantage, or use their race's normal size when that would be advantageous.
Special: This feat does not apply to worn items such as armor or clothing that must be fitted to the appropriate size.

Notes
The genesis of these feats lie in the relative growth of dwarves and elves since the earliest days of D&D. I blame Games Workshop and their big chunky dwarf models. And half-orcs are pretty frequently portrayed as larger than man-sized nowadays. That used to be the criteria for whether or not a critter was mechanically defined as large. Listing specific races in the prerequisites is a pretty ham-handed way of preventing Large dwarves, but I couldn't think of a better way to get the job done.

Has anyone seen feats like these before? I figure with so much OGL material out there that a lot of new crunchy bits are actually re-inventions of already published mechanics.

Grodd Bless Players...

...and their greedy, power-grubbing little hearts. In my mind the character build rules for my current D&D campaign are the height of generosity. The races, class, spell, and equipment choices span approximately a dozen published sources. We use the Gestalt rules to allow for broad ranges of power in individual PCs. And yet all of this is still not quite enough for some of my players. "Can we retool this prestige class to allow a good-aligned character to take it?" "Can you look over this class from the Wizards website?" The first time this happened I was annoyed. Like my reaction when I agree to buy my daughter a toy at Wal-mart but then she decides she wants 2 toys. But more and more I care less and less about this sort of thing. My only real concern is intra-party strife. If Doug's PC gets levels in Orc-Faced Killer and Jonathan builds a Dewonkeeper my campaign world isn't going to implode. But will it annoy Stuart and Jon? They're both grown-ups who can deal with it, but resentment is resentment no matter how small and silly the emotion. I think if half the party gets shiny new toys, then it would be best to come up with some sort of gimme for the others.

TNA: Shut up and wrestle

Dear TNA,

I nearly turned off my TV during the first five minutes of this week's TNA Impact. With regards to the opening rantifesto from Jim Cornette: Who writes this crap? First of all, somebody give Cornette a title that will stick. "Commisioner" works fine. I understand TNA used the title "Director of Authority" for a while. That sounds kinda cool. Hell, call him "Chief Executive Officer" for all I care. Just give him a clear title that communicates the fact that he is now the bossman. Calling him "the new face of TNA Management" does not work. It's too long and it's unclear whether he's in charge or running water for some shadowy behind-the-scenes type. Second of all, start your damn wrestling show with some wrestling, m'kay? Nobody tuned into TNA Watch Some Guy In A Suit Yap His Gums. You like to call your program the "60-minute Adrenaline Rush", well book it like you mean it! Start the show with some action! Or at least keep the plot focused on the wrestlers. You could have started that segment with Jarrett coming to the ring and throwing a tantrum, then have Cornette come out and give him a brief verbal slap-down. Doing it the other way around was bass-ackwards. Finally, who the hell is Jim Cornette and why should I give a crap about him? Seriously, at least Zybyszko has some cred from the peak WCW days. When was the last time Cornette was a notable on-screen persona? Back when he was doing color commentary for Crockett? Is your target demographic really fans who remember the Midnight Express?

I must admit I'm glad I stayed with the show. I don't care about the muscle chick hanging out with Syles and Daniels, but the lion's share of the match was entertaining. Seeing the Alpha Male pull a goldbergian quick squash was nifty. As usual, the LAX was credible right up until the random swerve beatdown. Eric Young was funny, pulling off his dummy schtick without looking like a retard, but please tell him to stop using everyone's full name. I like the James Gang/3-D feud but at some point one of these teams needs to tussle with Styles/Daniels for the belts. Joe/Dutt/Senshi was a great main event. And I salute you for moving the X-Division title without besmirching Joe's 'unstoppable' streak. You can push Joe to the moon as far as I'm concerned.

A Tip O The Hat

I'd like to give a shout out* to David Willis, author of nifty webcomic Shortpacked!, for replying to my request for some Transformers information. Anyone who reads Shortpacked! for long will quickly discover that Willis is only slightly less of a fan than that guy who legally changed his name to Optimus Prime. Anyway I was impressed that Mr. Willis responded to my inquiry within 24 hours. I'm sure he's got enough pestering fans and is busy writing comics that I sorta fired my email off hoping I might get some sort of response some time in the distant future.

*"Shout out" is old enough slang that I can almost type it with a straight face. I had originally intended to use the phrase "mad props" but I just couldn't bring myself to do it.

this is totally blowing my mind, man

This item comes courtesy of Traveller 3-D graphics man Andrew Boulton, posting at Citizens of the Imperium. Some of you may remember the old hospital show St. Elsewhere, most notable in my mind as the last time Howie Mandel was entertaining. It was revealed in the final season of St. Elsewhere that the whole show took place inside the dreamings of an autistic child, much like the way the entire seventh season of Dallas had been Pam Ewing's dream. The dream season of Dallas was problematic for the fans of Dallas spin-off Knots Landing, as Bobby Ewing's death in Dallas season 7 was part of the plot of that show as well. Since Bobby was still dead in Knots Landing, one could conclude that Knots Landing from that point forward was all part of Pam's dream as well!

Well, Tommy Westphall's Mind - A Multiverse Explored totally blows the Dallas/Knots Landing situation out of the water. Site maintainers CorssoverMan and Smash have tracked over 200 TV shows with connections to St. Elsewhere. They maintain that all of these shows must also be occurring within the mind of Tommy Westphall. And these are not all obscure shows that no one has ever heard of, either. We're talking about X-files, Cheers, and I Love frickin' Lucy! You thought you were watching a TV show, but you were wrong. You're just getting a glimpse into one of the infinite worlds within Tommy Westphall's dreams! This insane spiderweb of interconnections is panstakingly documented and graphed in the way only obsessed geekotronic fans can.

Man on fire

Doug, one of the cool players in my Wild Times D&D campaign, is really on a roll. First, in the comments to my new campaign proposal, he suggested tying the three subcampaigns together by making the three PC groups 'eternal champion' style lateral incarnations of each other. That's too cool. Now he's got a nifty idea for curing the Epic Rules Blues I've discussed in this earlier post. Doug suggests dropping the epic rules from Wizards and instead taking a page from Monte Cook's Arcana Evolved: stretch the campaign by adding standard progressions for levels 21 through 25. This would be a snap for some classes, like the fighter and sorcerer. Others, such as the monk, would need shiny new special abilities. I don't really need all the core classes statted out for this to work, just the ones that my players plan to take past 20th. Heck, with all the multiclassing shenanigans they pull, maybe no one will end up with 21 levels in any single class.

With four post-20th gestalt PCs, I bet we could still play Quicksilver Hourglass, the 30th level adventure published in Dungeon last year. That's been my big honkin' goal for this campaign for a long time.