Hearts and Minds: Saving a World on the Brink of War! A Mindjammer Adventure is a sourcebook and scenario for Mindjammer – The Roleplaying Game: Transhuman Adventure in the Second Age of Space, the Space Opera setting with a harder, more contemporary Science Fiction edge published by Mindjammer Press. Set some fifteen thousand years into the future during the Second Age of Space, it takes place on the world of Olkennedy whose society stands on the brink of civil war. Originally settled eight thousand years ago during the First Age of Space, like so many planets settled then, the original colonists were forced to survive with no contact from Old Earth, a local astronomical event forcing some into stasis, the others to survive as best they can. When the surviving original colonists awoke, their reappearance led to tensions between them and the society which had survived, regressed, and was building anew. These tensions have been exacerbated in the last two decades when long spread rumours of aliens were confirmed with the arrival of the Commonality.

In the Second Age of Space, the New Commonality of Humankind presides over an expanding sphere of influence and control, seeking to maintain and protect its culture as it maintains and protects those of other worlds through the offices and agents of the Security and Cultural Integrity (SCI) Instrumentality. Yet not every world wants or is ready to accept the influence of or integration into the Commonality. So it is with Olkennedy. There are many on the world who do not believe that the Commonality when it says it protects the rights and cultures of those worlds it adopts and in particular, they fear the loss of individuality should they accept implants which grant them access and membership of the Mindscape, the virtual world which connects the Commonality. There are a great many who would take up arms to protect the loss of such rights and culture, and there even more who could be persuaded to join them. Opposing views clashes, tensions rise, and civil war  looms. It is into this febrile situation that the player characters step.

The first half of Hearts and Minds is devoted to detailing and describing the world of Olkennedy, its people, history, and culture. Or rather it focuses on the area which can support life, a crater deep enough to hold an oxygen-rich atmosphere and which has a subtropical climate, including a sea, with snow layers to the north. The planet has a high gravity, is subject to high winds and storms, and has a short day. The generally self-reliant inhabitants have had millennia in which to adapt to this. The planet is home to five distinct nations. Columbiana is youngest, but the most advanced and most dominant, its citizens mostly descended from the colonists—known as the Awoken—who emerged from stasis a millennia ago, whilst Van Kuvrai is home to the descendant of the colonists who did not enter stasis. Nwasha and Omianto are home to the Nwasha pithecines who were originally developed as labour by the original colony. Nwasha is primarily an arboreal culture whilst Omianto is more industrialised. Lastly, Akantack hominids, similarly developed as a labour force by the original colonists are nomads who live in the Snow-Layer which runs around the rim of the Crater or the Akantack Sanctuary. Although the five nations of Olkennedy have existed peacefully for a century, now their planet’s membership of the New Commonality of Humankind threatens to bring them into conflict once again.

As well as the inhabitants and cultures of Olkennedy, Hearts and Minds details the colony’s ecology, flora and fauna, major cities such as Craterport Down, technology, and more. Scenario hooks and random events are provided for both wilderness and urban settings, such that there is more than enough information here for the Game Master to run her own adventures. Together with the Genotype for the Akantack hominids, there is also information enough to create characters native to Olkennedy and perhaps explore some of its history, for example, why the Awoken emerged from stasis when they did or what were conspiracy theories surrounding the Commonality’s presence prior to the Disclosure, the traumatic event which revealed the existence of the New Commonality of Humankind to the Olkennedians. 

Of course, Hearts and Minds is designed to explore a clash of cultures, that is between the Commonality culture and a relatively newly found culture, that of Olkennedy. Whilst some Olkennedians accept the presence of the Commonality, many do not and they have coalesced around the Fiver separatist movement, named for the five nation on Olkennedy. In the years prior to the arrival of the player characters, its activists have been actively attacking the Commonality presence on planet, fomenting riots, causing unrest and engaging in acts of ‘terrorism’ or ‘freedom fighting’—depending on your point of view. This is not helped by factionalism within the Commonality itself. Two factions are detailed. The Integrator faction want to bring newly discovered planets into the Commonality, whilst the Dialogic faction wants to maintain a conversation with each newly discovered world rather than simply bring into the Commonality.

The second half of Hearts and Minds is the adventure itself. The most obvious role for the player characters will be SCI Force agents, sent to Olkennedy because of the deteriorating political situation, but they might also be diplomats, soldiers of the Armed Forces Instrumentality, merchants, scientists, or a mix of all six. Their roles of course will colour their approach to handling the situation on Olkennedy. For example, soldiers of the Armed Forces Instrumentality are more likely to commit to a military solution, whilst diplomats will seek a more conciliatory solution. Whatever their roles, throughout the scenario the Game Master will be tracking the effects that their actions have using Mindjammer’s Plot Stress mechanics. Essentially, through their actions, it is entirely possible for the player characters to sway the opinion of the Olkennedians towards or away from accepting the presence or membership of the Commonality—or somewhere in between.

The adventure is played out over four episodes and an epilogue, the latter being when the Game Master will assess the actions of the player characters and determine the ultimate outcome of events on Olkennedy based on them. There are plenty of opportunities for both roleplaying and conflict, but Mindjammer being a Transhuman Space Opera roleplaying game, there are lots and lots of opportunities for action. Now much of the action may well look a little like a cliché in places, but the action scenes are well handled and once the player characters get involved, with their wide array of Aspects being brought into play, the action will be anything but. If there is an issue with Hearts and Minds, it is that running it is a challenge. This is because it explores numerous options and their consequences as the scenario proceeds, and it is all too easy for the Game Master to get lost in them. The likelihood is that the Game Master will need to work harder to keep track of everything, especially of the consequences of the player characters’ actions and decisions, and when combined with having to present the scenario and roleplay its many NPCs, she may well find she has a heavier workload than is the norm.

Physically, Hearts and Minds is well presented behind its Eugène Delacroix’s ‘Liberty Leading the People’ inspired cover. The book is mainly done in black and white, but touches of colour are used to bring out its maps. The artwork is excellent, although a little dark. The writing and editing are well done, but if there is one thing that the book lacks, it is an index. Although less than a hundred pages in length, there is a lot of information in Hearts and Minds and having a better means of finding things would make it easier for the Game Master to run.

Originally published in 2015, the politics present in Hearts and Minds, although set on a Science Fiction world in the far future do feel relevant today. The adventure and situation explores deeply polarised political views, threats to cultural identity, loss of status, and so on, which escalate into civil unrest, acts of violence, and even terrorism. Of course, Hearts and Minds is a fiction, but undeniably there are parallels with contemporary politics, whether in the United Kingdom, Europe, the USA, and elsewhere. How much a gaming group wants to read into the scenario is another matter. It can be played with or without the group drawing the parallels.

Hearts and Minds can be played as one-shot or a convention scenario, and there are guidelines given to that end. Yet to do so, would be to miss a lot of the depth and nuance to the scenario’s set-up, to all too easily and quickly side with one polarised faction or another. Played as a full scenario, and what Hearts and Minds does is present an exploration of Mindjammer’s core themes—cultural conflict, the rediscovery of strange new worlds, and the personal conflicts which arise from them, all played out against an advanced Space Opera background. Simply, Hearts and Minds: Saving a World on the Brink of War! A Mindjammer Adventure is the ideal first scenario to showcase what the roleplaying game is all about.

And for this weekend, a little round from one of the best blues musicians Dallas has ever produced. Not familiar with the one and only Cricket Taylor? Well, that needs to be rectified. Copy

Published by Hydra Cooperative, LLC, Lorn Song of the Bachelor is an Old School Renaissance fantasy scenario for the roleplaying game of your choice. If choosing a retroclone, it works with any that use ascending Armour Class, and in terms of setting, it would work with any which involve elements of colonialism, imperialism, and mercantile adventuring companies, such as the East India Company or the Dutch East India Company. So it would work with Arion Games’ Maelstrom as much as it would Triple Ace Games’ Leagues of Adventure: A Rip-Roaring Setting of Exploration and Derring Do in the Late Victorian Age! or the same setting as Hot Springs Island or that of Crypts of Indormancy. It would also work as far off location in Empire of the Petal Throne: The World of Tékumel. The scenario does also mention the use of firearms, but they are not integral to its play and the Game Master can easily ignore their inclusion.

Obviously, the scenario’s themes of colonialism, imperialism, and mercantile adventuring companies are contentious issues, even difficult ones for some, but the author of Lorn Song of the Bachelor makes clear that they are unavoidable given the legends and history of the region that the scenario is based upon, and that they are open for the players and their characters to explore and make choices about. To that end, no obvious incentive is provided to involve the characters in the situation detailed in Lorn Song of the Bachelor.

Although is a sandcrawl of sorts, Lorn Song of the Bachelor is quite different to the previous sandcrawls published by Hydra Cooperative, LLC, such as Slumbering Ursine Dunes and Misty Isles of the Eld. It is as far away from the Hill Cantons as can be imagined, being a riverine and dungeon crawl inspired by a story from the island of Borneo. It shares much with the lovely fanzine, MR-KR-GR The Death-Rolled Kingdom—crocodilian gods, forgotten monkey-empires, dangerous waters, and exotic fantasy—and indeed, they share the same author, Zedeck Siew. And just like R-KR-GR The Death-Rolled Kingdom, Lorn Song of the Bachelor feels humid, sweaty, and sun-drenched, strange, and exotic.

In essence, Lorn Song of the Bachelor is all set-up. At the far reaches of a river, in the lands of the tribe known as the Gleaming Fins, grow great trees from whose heartwood can be extracted a valuable incense, Dreaming Agaru, which aids divination of all sorts with flashes of true inspiration. So the Company sends trade factors and loyal mercenaries—all bad teeth and bad breath—up river to trade and harvest the heartwood of these trees. Yet that trade is threatened by the Bachelor, a giant albino crocodile, which has been the scourge of the river for centuries, having killed all of the other crocodiles. Long has it preyed upon the boats of the Gleaming Fins tribe, upending them and tipping the men into the water to be snapped up. Many times the tribe has hunted the great riverine beast, even killing it, but always it returns. Is the Bachelor a god? Is he immortal? Now it takes the Company’s boats too and so threatens its investments and revenues.

The most obvious way into this for the player characters is to be hired by the Company—akin to Conrad’s Heart of Darkness—but what they will discover is faction upon faction within the lands of the Gleaming Fins. The one-armed, silver painted Vartu Si Sartu, Gleaming Fins chief wants the Company gone; the untattooed, jade finger-nailed and abacus-wielding Company merchant, Machivir Sanna Krau, wants the Bachelor dead; and the wrinkled, incense-infused, firefly surrounded witch and midwife, Sati Wu Sati, wants the curse of the Bachelor on the river lifted and the breaking up of the crocodile cult dedicated to him. These are not the only factions and not the only motivations threading their way through Lorn Song of the Bachelor. The player characters will need to weave their way through these to learn the secrets that lie at the literal heart of the Gleaming Fins territory.

Lorn Song of the Bachelor is presented in a sparse fashion. Descriptions are kept to a minimum, often supported with a table or two of further elements waiting to be found and interacted at each location. There is often a bullet-point or list-like quality to the writing, making it accessible and easy to work with. In terms of scale the adventure really only consists of eight locations, each roughly a half day apart, and a small dungeon of just seven locations, a ruin left over from the Monkey Empire. Here the descriptions are richer and weirder, perhaps even more wondrous.

Of course, the presence of the Bachelor, the albino god-crocodile, lurks throughout the scenario and will become an active threat whenever the player characters are on or by the water. Unsurprisingly, this is very likely to occur given the location of various places in Gleaming Fins territory, and ideally it should, since the Bachelor is mystically linked to parts of this land and should he be hurt, there are repercussions for these locations. This perhaps one of the two weakest parts of the scenario in that it does not seem quite strong enough in effect and will need to be carefully worked in by the Game Master. The other is that the solutions to the scenario, there being several given the number of different factions present in the region, are not clear. Now part of this is intentional, as after all, they should not be obvious, but the players will need to work as hard to get at them as the Game Master will in presenting them.

Physically, Lorn Song of the Bachelor is a lovely little book. It is well written with its peoples and personalities, its places, and its strangeness being described with a very simple economy in terms of its words. Whilst the cartography is clear and strong, the minimum of description in the writing is paired with utterly delightful artwork, light, if not ethereal, ranging from the inhabitants of the Gleaming Fins lands and the weird objects found there to the strange vistas of the Monkey Empire ruin and the bestiary found at the back of the book.

The isolated and exoticism of Lorn Song of the Bachelor does mean that it may not be easy to add to an ongoing campaign, since it may well be far away from the campaign’s main locations. However, that does not stop it from being a lovely little adventure, a mini-sandbox into which the player characters can come and explore and perhaps aid one faction or another. It is simply presented with artwork which evokes so much of the strangeness and exoticism of the Gleaming Fins lands. Although the formatting means it looks simple, there is a lot of detail and flavour to Lorn Song of the Bachelor which together evoke visions of a very different world and of a very different fantasy to which a Western audience is used.

(The Texas Triffid Ranch Occasional Newsletter and Feedlot Clearance Sale is a regular Email newsletter, with archives available on the main TTR site at least a month after first publication. To receive the latest newsletters, please subscribe.) Originally published on … Continue reading →

From Chaosium, Inc. with the Miskatonic Repository for Call of Cthulhu, Seventh Edition and the Jonstown Compendium for RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha and HeroQuest Glorantha (Questworlds) to Wizards of the Coast with the DM’s Guild for Dungeons & Dragons, publishers are seeing the benefit of fan-based content. Free League Publishing, the Swedish publisher best known for roleplaying games as Mutant: Year Zero – Roleplaying at the End of Days, Coriolis: The Third Horizon, Tales from the Loop – Roleplaying in the '80s That Never Was, Forbidden Lands – Raiders & Rogues in a Cursed World, and Symbaroum, has its own platform for user-made content in the form of the Free League Workshop.
Slaves to Fate: An Adventure of Endless Winter is a short scenario for the near-Dark Ages fantasy roleplaying game, Symbaroum. Published by Earl of Fife Games, it is a focused affair actually intended as an introduction to a new campaign, Forever Winter. Consequently, it is linear in structure, it requires a particular set-up, and places a big responsibility with one player. The set-up is quite simple. The player characters are slaves. Mostly Ogres and Goblins, but also a mix of other races and occupations, so the player characters then. They should all be beginning characters and their players should decide how and why they ended up enslaved in the first place—captured by slavers, sold into slavery, to pay off a debt, and so on. One of the player characters should be a Changeling, and whilst Slaves to Fate provides enough in terms of motivation and background for this character, his player is free to create whatever character type he likes and there is still room for him to add elements to his backstory if he so desires. Alternatively, the Game Master can simply create this character as an NPC.

As the scenario opens, the player characters, as part of the slave coffle, have been taken north into the Davokar Forest where they are being worked all but to death felling trees and preparing lumber for shipment south. As the temperature drops and the player characters try and cope with exhaustion and not enough food and water, there is opportunity for them to escape. Several methods are discussed, but whatever the means, the player characters find themselves hounded from their camp by marauding beasts. Ultimately, they will find refuge, but all too quickly it becomes a prison and again they must escape to confront the forest itself…

The scenario does call for a degree of buy-in upon the part of the players, not least of which upon whoever will be playing the Changeling. Some players may object to being pushed from pillar to post, and may just simply refuse to the trust the Changeling, whether a player character or an NPC. To an extent the scenario includes advice on what happens if either the Changeling or the player characters die, but to get the fullest out of Slaves to Fate, the Game Master may want to talk to her players about the expectations of the scenario before play begins. Certainly she will need to do that with whomever is playing the Changeling.

Physically, Slaves to Fate is a 4.63 Mb, fourteen page, full colour PDF. The layout is clean and tidy and the illustrations are good, and generally well written even if it needs an edit in places.

In fact, Slaves to Fate is not a new adventure, it having been adapted to Symbaroum from previous versions for Zweihänder – Grim & Perilous, Shadow of the Demon Lord, Demon Gate, and the Genesys roleplaying game. The grim, near apocalyptic nature of the scenario though, fits the Dark Ages feel of Symbaroum as much as it does Zweihänder – Grim & Perilous and Shadow of the Demon. The scenario can only work as a prelude, the set-up for the campaign to come, Forever Winter, it otherwise being too linear and too bleak to really work as a one-shot. As the set-up to a campaign, Slaves to Fate works well enough and will hopefully lay the groundwork for the Forever Winter campaign.

The spring 2020 NARBC Arlington reptile show is over, but the application for the September 2020 show just went out. Expect a much wider range of plants in September, as the Venus flytraps and North American pitcher plants were still … Continue reading →

Astute readers might notice that the enclosures at the gallery and at shows through 2020 so far have nameplates with both basic information on the enclosure and a QR code. Triffid Ranch displays already started phasing out individual business cards … Continue reading →

The Love Potion by Evelyn De MorganThought a Class Struggles might in order today.  I have been thinking a lot about the Alchemist lately and thinking that of all the potential classes, this the one Old-School AD&D/D&D talks around the most, but never actually executes. My history with the alchemist goes back to when I was creating a bunch of new classes.  There was the witch (obviously), followed by the necromancer, the "sun priest" and finally the healer.  The alchemist was one that I mentioned in conjunction with all these other classes, but never had much more than an outline of it.

So let's have a look at how the Alchemist has presented to us over the years and what the class has become today.

The Dragon Magazine Alchemist(s)
I want to start here since these are the first alchemists. The ones that even predate the information in the DMG.
To claim there is one alchemist from Dragon Magazine is a bit of a stretch.  While a claim can be made for the Dragon Mag witch class, the alchemist has seen less cohesion.
The first alchemist we see, and one that predates AD&D, is the  "New D&D Character Class: The Alchemist" by Jon Pickens in Issue #2, page 28. This is a solidlyOD&D class.  Here we get 20 levels of the alchemist class which functions as a slightly weaker version of the magic-user.  It can create potions up to 6th level, like spells.  This alchemist though has some special powers to go with it. It can detect and then later neutralize poisons and paralysis. It can identify potions and can prepare various poisons.  The class is playable, but feels limited to a support role in some cases.  The Prime Requisite is Wisdom, though I think Intelligence is a better choice.

A few more years in and we get a combo of classes for Roger and Georgia Moore in Dragon #45, "NPCs For Hire: One who predicts... ...And One Who Seeks the Perfect Mix." This gives us two NPC classes, the Astrologer and the Alchemist. While the Astrologer looks like a lot fun, I want to focus on the alchemist now.  This is a pure NPC; no class levels or XP, no hp, just what they do and how they do it.  There is a bit on hiring an alchemist as well.  The assumption here must be that these are all older professionals likely past their adventuring years.  Fo me I can see both versions working at the same time in the same class.  Pickens' class for adventuring years and the Moores' for after that.

Separate, these classes feel a bit lacking by my standards but are likely fine by others.  Together though they combine rather nicely into a complete whole for me.

In "Recipe For the Alchemist" (Dragon Mag Issue #49), Len Lakofka presents, in very typical Len fashion, a very complete alchemist class.  Like many of his classes, this one is an NPC only and should be considered something of a more useful henchman.  In addition to the powers of detecting and making potions and poisons there are skills on glass blowing and pottery making.  Two useful skills for an alchemist to be sure.
There are XP per levels given, but they add up to be a little bit more than the magic-user if you consider the first couple levels are "apprentice" levels with little more than pottery making and glass blowing skills.   While the class is very complete it is a bit prohibitive as a PC class. I am certain that is by design.

There is a bit of a stretch before we get to another one, but it is worth the wait. "Better Living Through Alchemy" from Tom Armstrong in Dragon #130 has become in my mind the defacto article on alchemy in D&D.  Armstrong gives us not only an alchemist class but also a primer on Alchemy and how it could work in the game.  This is also the only alchemist I have played and playing the class though was hard. It had higher XP per level than the wizard and there was little they could do without their lab. The article is dense. That is in the sense that there is a lot here to read and unpack.
The article reads like a cleaned-up version of all the alchemists we have seen so far and this one also has the benefit of a few more years of play on it. 

The Alchemist in the DMG and D&D Expert
In between all of those we get some notes on the alchemist from the Dungeon Master himself in the DMG.  Though if anything this only makes me want to have an Alchemist NPC class, or better yet PC class, even more.


While the alchemist is not needed for higher-level magic-users, someone is going to need them.  Plus someone out there is creating all those potions.   If Jonathan Becker's recent deep-dive into the Illusionist class is any indication we could have used a magic-user sub-class of an alchemist more than the illusionist!

The D&D Expert set also has guidelines for an alchemist and maybe the most iconic alchemist art there is in D&D.


For 1000 gp a month you can have an alchemist on hire. Likely less for that sketchy guy above.

So how do we get there?  Well, let's see what the 3rd party publishers have to say.

Bard Games



I have gone on the record many, many times about my love of the books from Bard Games.  Their Compleat Spellcaster is still a favorite and particularly germane to today's discussion is their Compleat Alchemist.


While the Compleat Spellcaster is my favorite for obvious reasons, the Compleat Alchemist seems to be the most popular.  There are two prints from Bard Games, the Arcanum (which combines all three) and then another one from Wizards of the Coast long before their D&D years.

This was one of the most complete (it says so in the title) alchemist classes for some time to come. At 48 pages the book was huge for a single class.  By necessity, the class was written for "any FRPG" so a lot of the language is coded since they did not want to run afoul of TSR. But there is enough information here for you to read between the lines to figure out what to do. 

Some time is given to the art and science of alchemy. This includes the use of special symbols and language to communicate with other alchemists. Prices and rarities of ingredients and equipment.  And even a component sheet to keep track of the alchemist stores.
Potions and Elixers are granted by level as one would expect, only, in this case, it details what the alchemist can do at their class level. Not by let's say potion level (like a spell).

This alchemist really was the gold standard by which all other alchemists were to be judged for years.  Enough so that it appeared in several different books by a few different publishers over the years.  So much so that it still appears in the Arcanum 30th Anniversary Edition from ZiLa Games.

The OGC / OSR Alchemists
Not to be left out modern authors have looked back to the Alchemist and created their own versions using the OGL.

Pathfinder
The evolution of the D&D game to Pathfinder has also given us an evolved alchemist class.  This is presented as a fully playable PC class. It is also so popular that while it was originally a "Base Class" in Pathfinder 1st Editon, it became a Core Class in Pathfinder 2nd Edition and the favored class of Pathfinder goblins.
I rather enjoy this version of the class since it more playable than previous versions of the class.  Good rationale is given as to why an alchemist would want to leave the lab and get out into the field of adventuring.   The class though does tend to be a little too "blasty" for my tastes and it seems that the 2nd Edition version has gone even more in that direction, but it is still a very fun class to play.

There is so much alchemist stuff  (over 300 according to DriveThruRPG) that there is even a product to collect all the OGC extracts into one place, Echelon Reference Series: Alchemist Extracts Compiled.

Pathfinder is not the only place though to find a "new" alchemist.  There are plenty of OSR/Old-school choices out there.  Here are a few I have grabbed over the years. In no particular order.

The Alchemist
Tubby Tabby Press
This is certainly one of the more complete alchemist classes I have seen. At 81 pages it is full of information on all of the class details, equipment, ingredients and everything the alchemist can create by level.  Designed for AD&D it can be ported over to any game. It is based on the Bard Games version.  There is only a small amount of art in this one and no OGL statements.  Despite that this is a very full book and plenty to keep players and GMs busy.

Basic Alchemist
Den Meister Games
This is a smaller product, but it is totally in line with the Basic-era games.  What makes this particular product useful is its flexibility.  Produced for Labyrinth Lord it is a solid B/X feeling class. The cover art even invokes the Erol Otus alchemist art from the D&D Expert book.  The alchemist can build potions, elixirs, and compounds and use them as magic-user spells.  Some examples are given and it has a great old-school feel. In particular, I love the alchemical failure table! 
At six pages it is not big, but it makes each page count. I do wish there more examples of spells though.

Supplement #1: The Alchemist
Vigilance Press
This is another smaller product. Five pages (1 cover, 1.5 OGL, 3.5 content) at $0.99.  It reminds me a bit of the Dragon magazine alchemists; Smaller XP per level needed, but only a few "powers" per level and some levels none at all. Slightly better hp and attacks set this off from other "magic-user" based alchemists.   I do wish this one had more to it than this, but it is a playable class.  If I were to use this one I might try it as a multi-classed Magic-User/Alchemist.  Get the advantages of the magic-user spells and the better hp/attacks of the alchemist.  Designed for OSRIC.

Old School Magic
Vigilance Press
This is an update to The Alchemist also by Vigilance Press. For another buck, you get more classes, another 23 pages and a better-looking layout. A good deal if you ask me.  The alchemist is very much like the one from the previous product.  Like the alchemist supplement, I might do a multi-class with this alchemist. Either as an alchemist-artificer or an alchemist-sage. 
The other classes include the artificer, conjurer, elementalist, hermit, holy man, naturalist, sage and seer.  Plus there are some new spells that I rather like.

The OSR Chymist
Jeremy Reaban
A slightly different version of the alchemist. Jeremy Reaban does some great classes and this one is no exception.  This chymist is closer in nature to the Pathfinder Alchemist but somehow this one feels more like an old-school class and manages to work well.   He includes some new formulae for alchemists/chymists and some sample NPCs.  Also there are tables for whatever old-school games you are playing. Sure conversion is easy, but this makes it all easier. 
It is PWYW, but my advice is to send him a buck or more. It is 16 pages so that is not bad for a dollar.

There are more, including many alchemists that are parts of larger books like Fantastic Wizardry, The Crimson Pandect, and the previously mentioned Arcanum.

One of the best things about attending the NARBC Arlington reptile show for the last decade is watching the evolution of the venue and the attendees. While Texas had excellent reptile shows on its own in the past, the real … Continue reading →

 Exhibit / February 20, 2020 

Object Name: Betamax sales training video
Maker and Year: National Training Systems, Inc., 1977
Object Type: Training video
Description: (K.E. Roberts)

Sony’s first Betamax VCR was the SL-6200, and it was housed in a teak wood cabinet with a 19″ Trinitron TV. The LV-1901 console, as the package deal was called, was released in Japan in May 1975 and debuted in the US that November. Price: between $2,295 and $2,495. Weight? Really fucking heavy. The VCR was sold separately (for about $1,295) starting in 1976, but department stores and consumer electronics outlets were left with the onerous task of unloading the first generation beasts loitering in their stock rooms and warehouses (the last 20 seconds of Raiders of the Lost Ark come to mind). Sony provided a “demonstration checklist” designed to help sales teams explain the entirely new concept of “recording one program while watching another” and “[recording] a program without even being there,” and they paid a company called National Training Systems, Inc. to help sales teams convince customers to shell out what amounted to the cost of a new Toyota Corolla.

Let’s start with the decor. The LV-1901 squats on a circular island of worn beige shag, which matches the implacable earth tones of everything else in the faux showroom, including the uneasy Muzak and the garb of our stereotypically unctuous salesmen—except for the plentiful ferns, which served as a kind of middle-class status signifier in ’70s and early ’80s America, similar to the aspidistra in prewar and postwar Britain. Although the sleek white pedestals and open cubes propping up Sony’s various TVs and stereos add something of a contemporary touch, the vibe is mostly that of the local, reliably down-home Sears. It’s certainly not the futuristic flavor served up in Sony’s 1975 promotional video introducing the LV-1901, where we see the monolith floating in star-twinkling space, kaleidoscopic video synthesizer effects, and lots of dry ice smoke. “The Sony Betamax,” intones a reverb-treated voice. “Its only purpose is to serve you.” And: “You’ll be free of the restrictions of time. Its uses are defined only by the limits of your imagination.”

Back on earth, our two salesman teasingly quibble and wink about who’s going to “role play” as the customer, and I half expected a porn film to break out. The sales pitch promises that the Betamax is “easy to use,” extolls “the great beauty of videotape” (blank Betamax tapes recorded a max of 60 minutes and cost almost $20), and endlessly reminds us that the LV-1901 (not to be confused with LV-426) comes with “dual tuners.” Although Betamax lost the format war precisely because Sony banked on consumers paying more for the perceived higher quality of the brand name, it holds a formative place in my media-chomping career. When the video store I worked at closed in 1987 or 1988, the magnanimous owner gifted me a used Betamax VCR, probably the SL-8200, along with a Beta movie of my choice. So I heaved the old bastard home and watched Enter the Ninja on it five or six times before it became my very own piece of antique furniture: comforting in its immovability, beautifully useless.

I was not going to talk about this today.  I wanted to do a One Man's God today.

But in truth, I can't be silent about this. Last week I talked about Bob Bledsaw II and his racist, anti-Semitic, anti-woman, posts on Facebook.  Some fans of Judges Guild were content to ignore them or try to separate the "art from the artist".

Well, I am here to say that is all bullshit.


If you buy one of my books you are buying a piece of me. You are buying the stories I read, the music I listen too, the movies and TV shows I watch.  When doing research I make choices to read Book A or Book B, Article C or Article D, Documentary E or F.  This goes on and on.  What I choose is based on my interests, my time, and yes, my political leanings.  You don't have a choice in this save for one; to buy or not buy my books.  When writing I have one principle that applies; is this fun to play. If so then I do it.  If I do it right you buy and enjoy it too.

But don't pretend my politics don't enter into it.

Well. Now all the hemming and hawing and handwringing aside, Bob Bledsaw II posted the following unhinged screed on the Judges Guild official Facebook page.  There is no separation now of art and artist.  And to be 100% accurate, BBII did not, as far as I know, create anything for Judges Guild.

You might need to click on this or download it to read the whole thing.  Otherwise, Tenkar over at his eponymous Tavern has been doing a good job of keeping track of this whole clusterfuck.


There is so much wrong with this posting that it would take me several hours to point all the self-contradictory statements, the outright false-hoods and tin-foil hat wearing conspiratorial bullshit and frankly, he is not worth my time.

But there are only two facts that matter to me.
1. This was posted as part of an official release on the Judge's Guild page.
2. It is so full of hate, bigotry and vile thoughts as to be repulsive to any reasonable individual.

Does BBII have to right say what he wants? Yes. So fuck off with the "free speech" bullshit argument.  There is no such thing as consequence-free speech.  He can say what he wants. So can I.

BBII has destroyed any sort of good legacy Judge's Guild had left.

So fuck him. Fuck his ideas. Fuck his company's products.
And if you support him or his ideals then fuck you too.

I am not going to buy any of Judges Guild stuff. If you decide you don't want to buy my stuff.
Good. I don't really want your money here.

I am happy to note there are many in the community, and in the OSR community too, to stand up against this type of behavior.

Here are some videos that address the topic.





There are undoubtedly more and plenty of Twitter and Facebook conversations too.

TL;DR Bob Bledsaw II is a piece of shit and if you support him don't fucking buy my books.
Likely you are too stupid to understand them anyway.

It’s been a while since the last time a Triffid Ranch booth appeared at the North American Reptile Breeders Conference show in Arlington: it wasn’t for a lack of interest, but a lack of opportunity. This year, though, it was … Continue reading →

 Exhibit / February 19, 2020 

Object Name: Mr. Coffee
Maker and Year: North American Systems and others,1972-present
Object Type: TV commercials for home coffee maker
Video Source: YouTube (Bionic Disco/Beta MAX)
Description (Michael Grasso):

The state of play in home coffee brewing in America during the early postwar period offered very little opportunity for a good cup of joe. The electric percolator, long the choice for home brewing, would often overheat and burn the coffee, or send foul, bitter-tasting grounds back into the brew. Individual-size European coffee makers like the French press and the Moka pot gained in popularity after World War II but were still mostly niche products purchased by European immigrants (or Americans with European pretentions). Instant coffee predated the war but became one of the many broader consumer products that gained market share thanks to the same developments in wartime food preservation that brought frozen concentrated orange juice to American breakfast tables. So if an American coffee-drinker wanted a quality cup of drip coffee before 1970, he or she would visit a restaurant or diner for a cup from the new, reliable filtered drip-brew coffee maker, Bunn-O-Matic. But most Bunn coffeemakers in the 1960s were built to churn out dozens of pots of coffee a day, with large carafes and multiple hobs, putting them well out of the price and practicality reach of most consumers.

Making the drip filter coffee maker easy, compact, and affordable enough for home use was the task that a pair of coffee supply executives set for themselves at the outset of the 1970s. Samuel Glazer and Vincent Marotta of the Cleveland, Ohio company North American Systems saw the popularity of the big filter-drip industrial coffeemakers and wondered why they couldn’t have a cup like that at home. They lured two former Westinghouse engineers, Edmund Abel and Erwin Schulze, from their aeronautics and electrical engineering jobs to work on a coffeemaker that could deliver just that. The key was the heating element—too hot and it would simply duplicate the bitter efforts of the percolator; too cool and it wouldn’t actually brew the coffee. The new coffeemaker beat the percolator on taste and on speed; using gravity to drip 200-degree Fahrenheit water through grounds in a disposable filter could produce a modestly-sized pot of coffee in under a couple of minutes. Abel’s patent went on sale as “Mr. Coffee” in 1972, and the American public went for it in droves, with a million Mr. Coffee machines being sold in its first couple of years on the market.

A big key to Mr. Coffee’s appeal in these early years was thanks to Marotta’s dogged pursuit of one of his favorite sports icons as brand spokesman: the Yankee Clipper himself, Joe DiMaggio. So reclusive in the years since his retirement from baseball and the death of ex-wife Marilyn Monroe that he’d been enshrined in song, DiMaggio relented to Marotta’s eager call to become the Mr. Coffee pitchman (DiMaggio himself wasn’t even a caffeinated coffee drinker because of an ulcer; he preferred instant Sanka). The combination of an approachable brand name, an easy to understand set of operating instructions, and an avuncular, trustworthy celebrity face made Mr. Coffee a household name. Mr. Coffee came along at a time when, thanks to women entering the workplace, more and more men were being asked to make contributions in the home and especially the kitchen; with coffee historically being associated in America with hard-working men, Mr. Coffee and its soft-spoken yet macho pitchman were culturally in the right place at the right time. Like many other home goods manufacturers, later owners of the Mr. Coffee brand would use its initial success to branch out into other products with not as famed or successful a brand career as the original. Nevertheless, Mr. Coffee’s ubiquity in the 1970s and ’80s led inevitably became fodder for pop culture parodies.

I was out getting some driving practice with my sons over the weekend.  They didn't want too so I made them a deal, if they drove we could go to our favorite local game store Games Plus.  So we did and I found something of a little treasure.


This is Avalon Hill's Witchcraft Ritual Kit from 1974!

So imagine this, the year is 1974.  Avalon Hill knows about D&D having passed on previous Gygax penned works.  The biggest movie of the year is The Exorcist and rival Milton Bradley is churning out Ouija boards all day.  What is Avalon Hill to do?  Simple they create a "game" based on Wicca and Witchcraft.

Supposedly authored by "Dr. Brooke Hayward Jennings", who I can find nothing on anywhere, and neither has anyone else, this was one of two of their occult-themed games.  The other was called "Black Magic" and featured a similarily "porny" cover.

Now, all that aside I have been wanting this game forever.  It has been out of print since the mid-70s and finding a good copy is nearly impossible.

I found this sitting in the stacks of out of print wargames. It was labeled as "unpunched" and interior in good condition even if the box had some shelf wear.  I knew, more or less what I was getting here, so despite the high price (I am not going to tell you what I paid for it) I had to get it.

Well.  I am not disappointed.

Let's have a look inside.






That game board is gorgeous! Not so sure about all the pieces, and those game tokens have to go!
I'll likely replace the male and female figures with minis, maybe 72mm ones, and the other items with small 3D printed versions.  Don't know yet, have to read how they are used.


The gamebook is a mix-mash of all sorts of wicca, occult and pagan ideas that lack coherence. It is, however, a fun read.







This is easily the most 70s thing I own.

I could not find any reviews online and none from any pagans or gamers to give me their insight and point of view.

Also, I am not sure what I will do with it yet. Like I said some of the pieces have to go to make it playable in my mind, but that game board.

In line with my "Traveller Envy" I talked about with Wizard's Quest and Witch's Caldron boardgames I really WANT to use this as part of the larger "War of the Witch Queens" campaign. I am just not sure how yet.  I do have other board games to add to it.

Oh, it also been properly pointed out that the TRUE way to express my Board Game Traveller Envy is via Starfleet Battles and my "BlackStar" campaign.  But that is a topic for another day.

 Exhibit / February 18, 2020 

Object Name: Denby tableware
Maker and Year: Denby, 1960s-1970s
Object Type: Tableware
Description: (Richard McKenna)

A strange talisman of British middle- and lower-middle-class aspirations of the 1960s and 1970s, Denbyware—the costly, absurdly heavy, hard-wearing (read, impossible to rid yourself of or destroy) brand of British tableware famed for its dun-colored hues, threatening shapes, and cranial-trauma patterns—was for a time the ne plus ultra of performative provincial socializing.

The British Midlands had long been a center for ceramics and pottery, and Denby had been producing stoneware—pottery fired at extremely high temperatures to make it impermeable to liquids—in the Derbyshire village from which it took its name since the early 19th century, over the decades cannily adapting its output to the changing needs and social aesthetics of the day. When the back-to-nature ideas of the counterculture began permeating the mainstream in the late ’60s, Denby’s products—their dolmenic mass hinting at ancestral connection, olde-worlde authenticity, and worthy refutation of shallow consumerism—were perfectly suited to the mood. The company’s memorable description of its “Ode” line (aptly pictured in the advert above with an anvil) as “immensely strong” and “devastating in design” provides a fairly accurate précis of Denbyware’s vocation: the implication was that these artifacts would not only outlive their owners, they might even outlive their owners’ civilizations, the only things left standing in the ashes of the increasingly likely nuclear radlands. Resembling ominous votive objects, Denbyware’s inscrutably esoteric forms seemed to emerge from ancient memory, as though the shade of Max Ernst might be using them to try to communicate something about the 20th century’s fucked-up relationship with its ancient past.

By the early ’70s, Denby’s main rivals for the White Collar Earth Children demographic were probably fellow Midlands pottery Midwinter, whose Stonehenge range flirted with Pagan themes, and Yorkshire company Hornsea Pottery. Denby’s principal perceived advantage over these competitors seemed to be that its products were heavier. A shitload heavier. In fact, Denby’s “stoneware” contrived somehow to be far, far heavier than actual stone. So heavy that it was actually an issue when moving house, as the stuff tended to hurtle through the bottoms of cardboard packing boxes like incoming meteorites breaking through cloud cover on their way to causing an extinction event. Unlike other tableware, if you dropped a Denby, the risk was not to the plate, it was to you and to your home and loved ones. The cups were so heavy that they would gradually droop over the aching fingers hooked through their handles and deposit liquid onto carpets and groins—though luckily their congenital crypt-like chill meant that within moments even the hottest of drinks was only tepid. It was almost as though the cups and plates and sugar bowls were not actually discrete objects but protrusions of some ur-tableware poking out from beneath the surface of the present day and moored to the eternal ley lines beneath.

Midwinter, one of Denby’s competitors

Together with other totems beloved of those migrating to the lower-middle classes—a pay-in-installments copy of the Encyclopaedia Britannica it was erroneously presumed would make me clever and some uncomfortable Ercol chairs—my family owned a set of Denby Sherwood when I was growing up that my parents had received as a wedding present back in the late ’60s. Given the Robin Hood-referencing name, it’s possible that evoking the sensation of slurping silt from concave rocks while sheltering under sodden foliage actually was Denby’s vision for the range. In any case, it was the result. Sherwood’s weird, death-colored finish conferred strange flavors upon any edible substance that came into contact with it: tea drunk from the millstone-heavy cups acquired a peculiar clayish taste, while Friday night fish’n’chips would go waxy and limp, as though being gradually irradiated. The Sisyphean force needed to lift the burial-urn mugs would often send their granite rims smashing into the teeth of the unwary like some ancient punishment, and each time the serrations of a knife or the tines of a fork accidentally caught on the surface of a Sherwood plate, a terrifying Stone Tape-esque screech was emitted that would freeze the whole family mid-fish finger.

Strangely, instead of encouraging the McKennas to rid ourselves of the cumbersome tableware, these weird properties only conferred upon The Denby an even more eerie grandeur. It was the same in every household I knew that had a set: The Denby were treated like fetishes—miniature henges, to be brought out only on occasions of highest ritual or to impress delegates from neighboring tribes. I called them totems earlier, and the received impression was very much that by laying hands on their chill surfaces, mind-melding with pre-lapsarian Iron Age ancestors could be achieved and balance restored to the earth.

It was also taken absolutely for granted that, as eldest son, I would in time be proud to have the Denby passed down to me and would fill all my available storage space with its imposing mass, as though it had been in the family for dozens of generations instead of bought on the HP in a department store in Chorley in 1967. Threats to sell the lot were greeted with uncomprehending horror, and in fact any nominal gain would in reality be offset by the difficulties involved in getting rid of the bastards: postage would incur moonshot-level costs while personal delivery would likely shatter the suspension of any car I’d ever be able to afford. How large numbers of Denby were ever moved about the country at all is a mystery up there with how the components of Stonehenge were rolled all the way from Wales to Salisbury—or at the very least testament to the sturdiness of the British freight rail system pre-Thatcher. 

I’m exaggerating in my critique of Denbyware, of course, and especially of Sherwood. I grew up venerating it, and even today bits of our set continue to crop up unbidden in my life like ancestral relics. Designer Gill Pemberton produced some lovely work for the company, and Sherwood was one of her most memorable: strange grave goods that show the denizens of capitalist industrial society grasping through their growing pay packets for something meaningful, something to connect them to who they are and to who they have been, even as they tuck into their Asda beefburgers. Something heavy.·

The Enchanted Fairy Tree, or a fantasy based on The Tempest by William Shakespeare

The enchanted tree, a fantasy based on the "Tempest" (1845)

The Knight and the Jötun, 1865-75

The Fairy's Flight



The Woodman And The Elves

God Thor Chasing the Dwarfs

God Thor Chasing the Dwarfs, 1878

Pursued by Elves

The Fairy Tree, 1865

The Dragon of Wantley

The Altar cup in Aagerup, The Trolls Give Chase

The Dragon Slayer

The Little Princess's Birthday Dragon

The Knight and the Spectre

The Witch's Home, No.2. "She's Off" 1875



The Witch's Home, No. 1 - Broom Waiting- Coming Out, 1870s

Richard Doyle - The Pied Piper of Hamelin, 1885

Snow White and Rose Red, 1877

Elves in a Rabbit Warren, 1875

Fairies and Red-Squirrels in a Forest

Wood Elves Hiding and Watching a Lady

In fairy land, an Elfin dance

Dancing Fairies

A Foxhunter's Nightmare





Triumphal March of the Elf-King, 1870

The knight pursued by sprites

Rumplestiltskin

Punch's Vision At Stratford On Avon.jpg

Illustration from "Bluebeards"

Illustration from "Puck on Pegasus" by Henry Cholmondeley-Pennell, 1868

Punch Interior Art, 1847

(Engraved by Dalziel)  illustration for J R Planché, An Old Fairy Tale Told Anew, 1866





Frontpiece from “Fairy Tales From All Nations” by Anthony Reubens Montalba, 1850

‘Fortune’s Favourite’,  from “Fairy Tales From All Nations” by Anthony Reubens Montalba, 1849

‘The Feast of the Dwarfs’,  from “Fairy Tales From All Nations” by Anthony Reubens Montalba, 1849

‘Dragon Giant’,  from “Fairy Tales From All Nations” by Anthony Reubens Montalba, 1849

‘Snow White and Rosy-Red’,  from “Fairy Tales From All Nations” by Anthony Reubens Montalba, 1849

‘Fortune’s Favourite, 2’,  from “Fairy Tales From All Nations” by Anthony Reubens Montalba, 1849

‘The Dragon Giant’,  from “Fairy Tales From All Nations” by Anthony Reubens Montalba, 1849

‘The Little Man In Grey,  from “Fairy Tales From All Nations” by Anthony Reubens Montalba, 1849

Interior art from "The King of the Golden River" by John Ruskin, 1885

Color interior art from "The King of the Golden River" by John Ruskin, 1885

The Battle of Elves and Crows, 1874

Dreams of fairies and mythical creatures

Dick Doyle Tortured by Procession Ideas, from Dick Doyl's Journal

Drawing for The Brothers Grimm tale "The Fairy Ring" The knight intrudes on the dining witch and dragon, 1846

Drawing for The Brothers Grimm tale "The Fairy Ring" 1846

A Book Full of Nonsense, Title Page

Illustrated Letters and More... From Hambourgh, 1948, Interior Art

Illustrated Letters and More... From Hambourgh, 1948, Interior Art

Doyle's nonense style monsters, in a letter to his father, 1843

Famous Great Sea Serpent, Punch Almanack, 1849

"Known, variously, by the nickname 'Dicky' and the pseudonym 'Dick Kitcat', Richard Doyle was one of the most popular illustrators of his time. A natural heir to George Cruikshank, Doyle was a humourist whose work ranged from social satire to representations of fairies and the 'little people'. Characterized by lyricism and lightness of touch, he worked for Punch during the formative years of the 1840s, and later became a sensitive interpreter of Thackeray. His 'elfin' (Muir, 102) masterpiece is In Fairyland (1869-70), a colour-book ostensibly designed for children which also appealed to adults and addressed adult themes in a coded form. Luxuriously produced, with intricate engravings on wood by Edmund Evans, this work set new standards in the field of book-production.

 Richard Doyle was born at 17 Cambridge Terrace, London, in September 1824. His father was the Irish cartoonist John Doyle (1783-1851), whose satirical prints were a scourge of the 1820s and thirties. Doyle was one of seven children, and all three of his (surviving) brothers were gifted artists. James (born 1822) was the author and illustrator of Evans's elaborate colour-book, The Chronicle of England (1864); Henry (b.1827) was an illustrator of note; and so was his youngest brother, Charles (born 1842, the father of Arthur Conan Doyle) However, Richard was unquestionably the most able of an exceptional family. Educated at home by his father, Dicky Doyle was a precocious talent.

 Aged only sixteen, he published a series of humorous envelopes for the newly-established Post Office, following this up with a satirical comment on Victorian neo-medievalism in the form of The Tournament (1840), a series of cartoons which was also a droll pastiche of the Germanic 'outline style'. In 1843 he joined the staff of Punch and in 1844 designed the intricate front cover, a teeming mass of fairies and elves milling around a rusticated title; revised in 1849, this manic opener established the magazine's emphasis on irreverent mockery, and was used as its signature image until the middle of the twentieth century. Doyle also provided quaint initials, by turns lyrical and surreal, and larger satirical works such as 'The Gold Rush' and 'Manners and Customs of Ye Englyshe' (1849). A devout Catholic who valued his Irish ancestry, he left the magazine in 1850 following an attack on Rome.

 Doyle worked thereafter as a freelance designer illustrating children's books, notably Mark Lemon's The Enchanted Doll (1849)and Ruskin's The King of the Golden River (1851). Other works, this time for adults, included The Foreign Tour of Messrs. Brown, Jones and Robinson (1854) in which he ridiculed the current vogue for tourism by showing a group of Englishmen bumbling their way around Europe, and Thackeray's pastiche of Ivanhoe, Rebecca and Rowena (1850). His collaboration with Thackeray was extended (and tested) in his detailed interpretation of the same author's acerbic novel of manners, The Newcomes (1854-55). This work, his only substantial commission for a contemporary novelist, revisited the blending of fantasy and psychological drama that had earlier characterised his work for Dickens's The Chimes (1845).

 In the sixties his publications divided fairly evenly between fairy books for children (an activity further supported by watercolours) and satirical works such Bird's Eye Views of Society , a series of fold-outs which helped to establish The Cornhill Magazine in 1861-2. His final, most impressive work was In Fairyland (1870, published 1869). Presented as a rich combination of coloured wood-engravings, an accompanying poem by William Allingham and an elaborate binding designed by the artist, In Fairyland was self-consciously designed as a treasure. However, its extravagant price (31 shillings and 6d)ensured that it was far too expensive for all except the most middle-class of households. Two thousand were printed, but records in the Longman Archive (University of Reading, United Kingdom) show that few were sold, a situation which led to the sale of remainders, in the form of a reissue with a revised title-page, in 1875.

 In Fairyland's economic failure reflected a change in taste and Doyle subsequently slipped into obscurity. He died of apoplexy (having collapsed on the steps of his club) in 1883, at the unusually young age of fifty nine. Following his death his juvenilia was reissued, principally his Journal of 1840 — a vivid visual record of the life of the times — Homer for The Holidays (1836), and a multi-coloured fantasy, Jack the Giant Killer. Doyle's reputation was eclipsed firstly by the artists of the 1860s and later by the sophisticated urbanities of Beardsley, Ricketts and the artists of the nineties.

 Doyle's oeuvre is well-known and his personal life and social milieu are equally well-charted, notably in Daria Hambourg's critical introduction (1948) and Rodney Engen's more extended analysis of 1983. He was a friend of Holman Hunt (Engen, 115-116) and was at home in the company of Millais and Rossetti, Dickens and Cruikshank. His special friend was Thackeray, who, like all of Doyle's associates, made a point of noting his sense of humour and easy charm.

 Yet Doyle was also known for his lack of lack of reliability. Characterized by a petulant dilatoriness and lack of focus, he was a poor collaborator. He was consistently late with his illustrations for The Newcomes, only meeting his commitments when Thackeray confronted him with the prospect of the work being passed back into the author's own hand. The Dalziels, who commissioned and engraved several of his works, were similarly frustrated, reporting how An Overland Journey to the Great Exhibition (1851) failed to exploit the interest generated by the event because the artist was outrageously slow and unresponsive. Doyle's excuses were often absurd, and the Dalziels reported that on one occasion he failed to meet a deadline because he had 'not got any pencils' (The Brothers Dalziel, 58). Such amateurism hampered the artist's success. Several books did not appear because he lacked the application needed to finish them, and completed work was often uneven in quality, patchily uniting accomplished designs and illustrations that were 'deplorably pedestrian' (Muir, p.102). Dicky Doyle's work is nevertheless a charming combination of comic burlesque, delicate drawing, a magical representation of the fairy world, mythology, satire, and intelligent interpretation. Widely collected, it visualizes mid-Victorian culture at its most wistful and amusing." - quote source


Image sources include Archive.org, Fulltable.com, Christie's, Heritage Auctions, Sofi's Flickr, Amber Tree Flickr,

The work of Richard's brother "Charles Altamont Doyle" who himself was the father of Sherlock Holmes author "Arthur Conan Doyle" was posted here a few days ago.

Richard Doyle's illustrations of Jack the Giant killer were recently posted here. His work was previously posted here in 2007.

Between October 2003 and October 2013, Chaosium, Inc. published a series of books for Call of Cthulhu under the Miskatonic University Library Association brand. Whether a sourcebook, scenario, anthology, or campaign, each was a showcase for their authors—amateur rather than professional, but fans of Call of Cthulhu nonetheless—to put forward their ideas and share with others. The programme was notable for having launched the writing careers of several authors, but for every Cthulhu Invictus, The Pastores, Primal State, Ripples from Carcosa, and Halloween Horror, there was a Five Go Mad in Egypt, Return of the Ripper, Rise of the Dead, Rise of the Dead II: The Raid, and more...

The Miskatonic University Library Association brand is no more, alas, but what we have in its stead is the Miskatonic Repository, based on the same format as the DM’s Guild for Dungeons & Dragons. It is thus, “...a new way for creators to publish and distribute their own original Call of Cthulhu content including scenarios, settings, spells and more…” To support the endeavours of their creators, Chaosium has provided templates and art packs, both free to use, so that the resulting releases can look and feel as professional as possible. To support the efforts of these contributors, Miskatonic Monday is an occasional series of reviews which will in turn examine an item drawn from the depths of the Miskatonic Repository.

—oOo—
Name: A Fossil

Publisher: Chaosium, Inc.
Author: Sean Monaghan

Setting: Modern Day

Product: Scenario
What You Get: 1.69 MB twelve-page, full colour PDF
Elevator Pitch: A lost auction is too heavy a price to pay. 
Plot Hook: A second chance to own the one book you really must have.
Plot Development: A dead rival, scales before the eyes, and a festering town...
Plot Support: Nine plain as they can be handouts and monster and creature stats.




Pros
# Open, flexible set-up
# Scope for player input
# Solid hook for the antiquarian investigator
# Potentially interesting setting
# Bullet point format eases Keeper’s job
# One-shot or one-session scenario
# Period neutral
# Creeping body horror

Cons# Needs editing
# Underdeveloped, murky setting
# Too much festering?
# Plot strands kept apart?
# No ACTUAL Sanity losses

Conclusion
# Underdeveloped 
# Needs editing
# Seaside body horror for one?

Latin for ‘from among (the) forgotten’ and sharing its name with a poem by H.P. Lovecraft, Ex Oblivione is a scenario for Delta Green: The Role-Playing Game, the roleplaying game of conspiratorial and Lovecraftian investigative horror published by Arc Dream Publishing. It can be played using the roleplaying game’s full rules or those from Delta Green: Need to Know. Be warned though, this is a brutal, bloody affair involving mass violence and absolutely not for the faint of heart. In fact, Ex Oblivione is not a subtle affair in terms of its horror or its violence, but although the scenario will not mark the end of Delta Green as an organisation—after all, that has already happened with the original iteration of Delta Green, and it came back—but it very much mirrors the very first encounter with the Unnatural by the agency which would one day become Delta Green. A horror out of the agency’s deep past is about to take its very bloody revenge.

Agents of Delta Green—whether of the Program or the Outlaws—get involved when ‘HOME DAGON HOME HOME YHANTHLEI SEA TO THE SEA.’ is found graffitied on the wall at a gruesome crime scene. A family of five in Mustang, Arizona, a remote town originally founded to support the long since shutdown nearby U.S. Navy base have been ritually butchered and whilst the local police force suggest that ‘Dagon’ might have occult links, given that it is mentioned in the Bible as the name of a god worshipped by the Philistines, its investigators have no clues as to the motives or perpetrators of this heinous act. Delta Green knows otherwise and strongly suspects the involvement of the Unnatural in the crime. Consequently, a team is dispatched to Arizona to investigate, identify, and nullify the threat.

Unless complicated by setting up (or even breaking) cover identities, the initial investigation in Mustang is quite straightforward—the crime scene, local witnesses, and so on. Clues though, point towards the ruins of the old Naval base, little more than a hangout for the local teenagers, drifters, and the homeless, and from there to New England. This will likely confirm the suspicions of veteran players of Lovecraftian investigative roleplaying, but Ex Oblivione does not go in that direction. Certainly, it draws heavily from that direction—or source material—for inspiration… What Ex Oblivione does instead though…

What Ex Oblivione does instead though, is something unlike almost any other ending to a Call of Cthulhu or Delta Green scenario. First, there is the creeping realisation as to who the murderers are, and that is shocking enough, but then there is climax itself, which will require careful staging upon the part of the Handler. It is brutal, it is violent, and the horror of it is exactly that—horrifying. To say anything more would be to reveal too much about what is a monumental confrontation with the Unnatural.

Physically, Ex Oblivione is well presented, the illustrations and cartography as you would expect. Although decently written, the scenario does feel rushed in places and could have done with another edit.

It is almost traditional for scenarios of Lovecraftian investigative roleplaying to involve a threat to humanity or the world, a threat of immense scale. Here the threat is far, far smaller, but still of a staggering scale that Ex Oblivione is likely to remain a memorable scenario for the players and their Delta Green agent characters. Unlike the meaning of title, the final confrontation in Ex Oblivione is not going to be forgotten for anyone who plays it.

 


























The Story of Jack and the Giants can be read at archive.org

Some artworks found at Full Table.

Now here is something truly unexpected!

DC Universe wants to get in on the "Critical Role" action and do a live-action unscripted 5-part special with actors playing the 1980s DC Adventures RPG.



Here is the information for DC.
DC UNIVERSE Announces Original Unscripted Gaming Mini-Series'DC UNIVERSE All Star Games'
Clare Grant, Vanessa Marshall, Sam Witwer and WWE’s Xavier Woods Join Freddie Prinze Jr. For Five-Part Role-Playing Game Adventure Set in The Classic 1980s Game DC HEROES
DC UNIVERSE has announced its first original unscripted gaming mini-series, DC UNIVERSE All Star Games. This new anthology series brings famous DC fans together to play a variety of games in the increasingly popular gaming show genre. Season One features a nostalgic role-playing adventure, The Breakfast League, from Executive Producers Freddie Prinze, Jr. and Sam Witwer. The first episode of the five-part series will premiere exclusively on the DC UNIVERSE digital subscription service on Friday, February 28.

DC HEROES, the famous post-crisis role-playing game, sets the stage for the first season in which Vanessa Marshall, Clare Grant and WWE superstar Xavier Woods also join as players. Set in the same 80s era as when the game was first published, the five participants role-play as a group of high schoolers stuck in Saturday detention. As they improv their way through a variety of situations familiar to fans of beloved movies from that time period, they soon discover their destinies as the world’s greatest super-heroes.

“DC Heroes was the first RPG I ever played as a kid. It was also my introduction to the DC Universe, its Heroes and, most importantly, its rich pool of villains.” said Prinze. “ I had a blast making this series and I hope all of you love it as much as I do.”

Directed by Jon Lee Brody and produced by Telepictures, “DC UNIVERSE All Star Games” is the first unscripted addition to DC UNIVERSE’s expanding original programming slate which includes “DCYou Unscripted” and “DC Daily.” New episodes will go live exclusively on DC UNIVERSE every Friday after the series premiere on February 28.

For more information on DC UNIVERSE and “DCU All Star Games” please visit dcuniverse.com and follow DC UNIVERSE on Facebook and Twitter.



This could be a lot of fun.

Join Freddie Prinze Jr (Buffy's Husband), Clare Grant (Oz's wife), Sam Witwer (multiple DC shows), and more. I am looking forward to this!