five links, get 'em while they're hot!

Just A Fluke of Party Bad Luck - Sounds like a rockin' campaign to me!

Uncyclopedia Explains It All - it's amazing the things you can find while googling something as innocent as "spork"

Midkemia Press - Still selling copies of their classic book Cities for five bucks plus shipping! By email I was told they had only " a couple" left in stock, so don't delay.

Buddy in Hong Kong - with thanks to Settembrini

Holmes as a Complete Game - another great Dragonsfoot thread

"Barons by the Grace of God"

At the library this week I found a favorite book from my youth. Life on a Mediaeval Barony by William Stearns Davis was one of the books (along with the Howard Pyle versions of King Arthur and Robin Hood) that prepared me for a lifetime of dungeoning and dragoning. This nifty volume presents a year in the life of a typical French barony circa 1220 AD.

The discussions center around a certain signeury of St. Aliquis. If no such barony is easily identifiable, at least there were several hundred second-grade fiefs scattered over western Christendom which wee in essential particulars extremely like it, and its Baron Conon and his associates were typical of many similar individuals, a little worse or a little better, who abounded in the days of Philip Augustus.

The book first came out in 1923 so any similarity in name between the lord of St. Aliquis and the greatest barbarian in ficition is no doubt a coincidence.

This is one of those grand overview books that can reward GMs without wholesale adoption of 13th century feudal France as your campaign model. There are plenty of little bits that can be swiped to add just a little gloss of medieval verisimilitude to a campaign world. I particularly like the chapter on the Tourney, which describes a more rough-and-tumble affair than the romantical notions that show up in a lot of gaming.

And the map of the castle is awesome:

The title of this post refers to the family motto of the lords of St. Aliquis "which meant that they obeyed the duke and his suzerain, the king, very little, and, we fear, God not a great deal."

The Great Spork Migration

Within the past 24 hours I've eaten at both KFC (also known as The Artist Formerly Known As Kentucky Fried Chicken) and Taco Bell. When I was a kid one of the memorable things about Colonel Sanders' operation was the spork. I don't recall ever getting a spork at any other fast food joint, but they were the standard eating utensil at Kentucky Fried. But last night not a single spork was to be found at the KFC. Meanwhile the Taco Bell now issues black sporks for eating pinto beans and taco salads and such.

I'm sure the changes at both restaurants can be easily explained away by market factors. Maybe fewer people eat fried chicken with forks, making the tines of the spork unnecessary. Maybe Taco Bell got a good deal on the sporks. I dunno. But seeing no white sporks at their usual haunt and then the next day seing black sporks in an unexpected place leaves me with the distinct impression that the sporks all went over to the Dark Side.

If I could draw or photoshop worth a darn, this post would end with a picture of Darth Vader holding a glowing red spork.

EDIT: Thanks, stuart!

Look out! Ghouls!

Wednesday night me and the gang played some more 1st edition AD&D, continuing our long slog to clear out the Moathouse. We had four casualties, including Elmo, when the party fought the 4 ghouls in the crypt. The cleric failed to turn and the result was a real fiasco. Doug finally had his magic-user cast a spell, a protection from evil to keep the ghouls from him. I had been harping upon him for two and half sessions that his magic-user has had plenty of opportunities to cast spells, despite knowing only read magic, jump, prot from evil, and light. We rolled starting spells exactly as Gary indicated, so no sleep or charm or magic missile for this 1st level M-U.

In fact, we've been playing with a lot of rules that I never used as a kid. When Pat's assassin hit 2nd level I cracked open the training rules and made him pay through the nose. When the PCs and some gnolls tied for initiative, we actually used the weapon speed rules for tie breaks. Next session we may even use the weapon adjustment for armor class charts. Individually, none of these mechanics add much to the game. That's why we ignored them all back in the 80's. But I'm having fun messing around with them now. And it keeps the players guessing a bit as to what is going to happen next.

Is it just me, or all ghouls one of the all-time 1st level PC killers? Three attacks per round combined with save or be paralyzed is pretty hardass. Add in that sleep and charm are useless with the fact that turning them isn't easy at level 1, and you've got a relatively common monster that can easily score a total party kill. There's a single surprise ghoul in at least two old modules I've rune: N4 Treasure Hunt and N1 Against the Cult of the Reptile God. I've ran both modules and both ghouls nearly destroyed the party in basically throwaway encounters. In fact, if I ran N4 again I'd probably cut the ghoul or demote him to a cannibalistic zombie. Meanwhile, T4 puts four ghouls in the crypt, and that's not even the hardest encounter in the module.

N4 Treasure Hunt is a fabulous little module for starting a new campaign, by the way. I've ran it twice to good effect. The players start as zero level nobodies who must fight there way to 1st level. There's these little charts where the DM tracks the behavior of each player and assigns them a class (or multiple classes for demi-humans) and an alignment when they reach first level. ("You used the bardiche for most of the combats, you snuck around a bit, and your alignment tended towards evil. By my tally you can be either a Lawful Evil monk or an assassin of any Evil alignment. Make sure bardiche is one of your weapon proficienies.") You can run the adventure with absolutely clueless newbies and skip most of chargen. The adventure takes place on an island that can be dropped into any convenient sea. If the adventure goes well the PCs end the adventure on a boat, so you can start the next adventure at a port of your choice. Good stuff.

Holy crap, polka!

This morning I planned on blogging about last night's session, but before I logged on I accidentally stumbled upon the greatest TV show in broadcast history: Big Joe's Polka Show! It's a show about polka music run by a guy named Joe, in case the name of the show was too subtle for you.

even more five links

By Jove, more spells should be reversible!

Best post-Seanbaby analysis I've seen. - Don't miss the scholarly exchange in the comments section.

I like swords

In the Labyrinth/Cidri homepage

Aaron Thorne's Random Dungeon Generator - dungeon stocking charts for Tunnels & Trolls.

World of Broadsword

Jeff Mejia (a.k.a. the Evil DM) has put out a new 31-page PDF called The World of Broadsword, a setting book/bestiary for Broadsword, his beer-&-pretzels RPG of barbarian movie action. I really like the Evil DM's unpretentious writing style. And I may have to steal his Strengths/Weaknesses/Opportunities/Threats system for describing political areas. Both the original game and The World of are well worth the few bucks he's asking for them. Good stuff!