The hottest new property in OSR gaming is Old-School Essentials.  Justifiably so too.   It is a great reinterpretation of the Basic/Expert rules and it is a lot of fun.  It is also on sale today as the DriveThruRPG Deal of the Day.

I am still a little bit away, further than I want to admit, from finishing up The Craft of the Wise: The Pagan Witchcraft Tradition.  But in celebration of OSE's sale here are some new witch spells.

First Level Witch Spells

Call Spirits of the Land
Duration: 1d4 hours
Range: The Caster
Call Spirits enables the witch to gather local spirits of the dead and elements, which appear to the caster as small ghostly disembodied heads, and listen to their tales about the surrounding
land and people.
▶ Characters listening can make an Intelligence Ability check to learn something about the local area.
▶ Characters who fail the check by five or less hear nothing but endless ramblings and chattering, possibly in an unknown or ancient language, that have nothing to do with the subject at hand.
▶ Those who fail by more than five hear nothing.
▶ A roll of a natural 20 provides completely false and maliciously misleading information.

Material Components: The caster must pay for the information with offerings of food, alcoholic beverages, incense, song, and pleasant conversation. The offering should total at least 1 gp.

Salving Rest 
Duration: Special
Range: The caster or a creature touched
This spell allows its subject to enjoy soothing, peaceful sleep, free of pain and sorrow, whenever she slumbers. As a result of this salving rest,
▶ The subject of the spell will heal an extra 1d3 hit points during each day of complete rest.
▶ The spell ends when the subject stops completely resting or if she takes any damage.

Material Components: A tea made from valerian root and lavender.

Second Level Witch Spells

Chameleon
Duration: 1 turn per level
Range: Touch
This spell allows any character touched to blend into her surroundings to the point of becoming nearly invisible. The character gains a +4/+20% to hide in shadows. Characters affected by a chameleon spell can always hide in shadows with a skill of at least 25% chance. This spell is used to create elven cloaks.

Material Components: The scale of a chameleon or a bit of skin from a cuttlefish. Alternately a bit of multi-colored cloth will also work.

Inscribe Tattoo I
Duration: Permanent
Range: One willing target
With this spell the caster inscribes a tattoo onto a willing subject. Only three such tattoos can ever be placed on one subject.
Tattoos have different abilities
Become animal: Allows the subject to shift into a normal animal, chosen at the time of inscribing. The animal’s HD must be equal to or less than the subject’s level. The subject can only shapeshift once per month.
Strike true: The subject gains a +1 to hit/damage. Magical creatures can be hit with this magic.
Magical protection: +1 to saves vs. magic. This can be from spells, wands, rods or magic-like effects.
Battle protection: +1 bonus to AC. Tattoo must be visible to have effect.
Magical Affinity: Used by spell casters this gives as -1 penalty to target’s saves.

Similar tattoos do not add their effects. Two Magical Protection tattoos do not prove +2 protection.  Only higher-level tattoos can.
The caster cannot tattoo herself.

Material Components: Special tattoo pens, needles, and inks are required.

Third Level Witch Spells
Hopping Doom Duration: 1 turn/level Range: 60 feetThe witch can summon 1d10 x 1,000 slimy wet bullfrogs to a spot designated (crawling out from rocks, nooks and crannies, or otherwise dropping from the ceiling or sky). They jump madly about, getting underfoot, and croak at a deafening volume that prevents conversation within the area of effect. The distraction is such that spellcasters must save (spells) before they can cast, and missile users roll to hit at -2. Movement within the area is halved.▶There is a base 10% chance (+5% per level) that 1d10 poisonous frogs will be in the group. ▶They will attack non-frog targets within the area of effect, forcing them to save (poison) at +2 or die. The poisonous frogs are colorful but otherwise identical to the rest.▶The caster can move the mass of frogs by telepathic command, at a maximum speed of up to 60 ft per round.▶The area of effect is determined by the number of frogs summoned (10 ft² per 1,000 frogs).
Material Components: A small fly.
MaliceDuration: 6 turnsRange: Touch Malice weakens the target creature's attacks: each time the target creature inflicts hit point damage on an enemy (by any means), damage dice must be rolled twice, and the lesser result used.
Material Components: The witch must be able to touch the target while giving a word of power.
Fourth Level Witch Spells
Venus GlassDuration: InstantaneousRange: One glass of waterThe witch sends a prayer out to the spirits of her ancestors and to the spirits of those not yet reborn into her life for a vision. A question is asked to give her a vision of a face. Typically the witch casts a venus glass for a maiden hoping to see the face of her future husband.She then cracks an egg and suspends the egg white in a glass of waterShe can then see the future, usually, the face of someone important to the witch or whomever the witch is asking about.▶ Face: the face of someone will appear. It may be indistinct or quite clear.▶ Portents: If the egg has blood in it means that the person they seek with bring them death.▶ Visage of Death: If the face switches from normal to a skull face then the person they seek will die.▶ Unclear: No face is revealed. The witch may try again the next night.
Material Components: An egg from a hen taken at or just before the dawn and a clear glass of pure water.
Fifth Level Witch Spells
Flood of TearsDuration: Instantaneous and one round per levelRange: Cone 60’ The witch begins to cry and creates a flood to wash away her foes. ▶ In the first round, the tears flow creatures caught in the flood must make a save vs. paralysis or take 1d6 hp of damage for every two levels of the witch (max 7d6). Save for half. ▶ For the rounds that follow the area remains inundated with water and the flotsam and jetsam of debris. Movement is reduced to half in this area. 
Material Components: The witch must cry.
Sixth Level Witch Spells
Eye BiteDuration: 1 round per 3 levelsRange: 25’ + 5’ per 2 levelsThe witch glares at a target. Each round, the witch may target a single living creature, striking it with waves of arcane power.  Depending on the target’s HD, this attack has as many as three effects.

HDEffect10 or moreSickened5-9Panicked, sickened4 or lessComatose, panicked, sickened
▶ Sickened: Sudden pain and fever sweeps over the target’s body. A sickened creature takes a -2 penalty on attack rolls, weapon damage rolls, saving throws and ability checks.  A creature affected by this spell remains sickened for 10 minutes per caster level.  The effects cannot be negated by a remove disease or heal spell, but a remove curse is effective.▶ Panicked: The target becomes panicked for 1d4 rounds as if under the influence of a fear spell.  After the initial effect is over, the target can become panicked again if he sees the witch and fails a saving throw.▶ Comatose: The target falls into a catatonic coma for 10 minutes per caster level.  During this time, it cannot be awakened by any means short of dispelling the effect.  This is not a sleep effect, and thus elves are not immune to it.
The witch can affect victims for 1 round per three caster levels.  Spell effects can last longer than this depending on the effect. 
Material Components: The witch needs to be able to see the victim.  She needs to touch her eye and point to the victim.

The Craft of the Wise: The Pagan Witch Traditions

Michael Grasso / January 16, 2020

The Voice That Thunders
By Alan Garner
The Harvill Press, 1997

Over the course of my many explorations of British hauntology of the 1970s over the past five years, I found myself enjoying a pair of television adaptations, produced a decade apart, full of deep mystical themes reaching back into the marrow of ancient Britain. In The Owl Service (1969) and Red Shift (1978), mythic emanations from the distant past return in our present, revenants who live again through the lives of young people in the postwar UK. These themes, echoed again and again in British fantasy dramas set in the contemporary era, hold a profound fascination for me, as an American cut off from a deep sense of magic, time, and place. One man was behind the novels upon which both these adaptations were based: British novelist, amateur archeologist and folklorist, and essayist Alan Garner. His 1997 collection of essays and lectures, The Voice That Thunders, lays bare the origins of his unique mode of storytelling. Garner’s upbringing suffused in the magic of Old Britain, his working-class family long-situated in one place (Garner’s home of Alderley Edge in Cheshire); and his early life marked by dual traumas—the Second World War and a brush with death thanks to childhood illnesses—gave Garner a unique insight into the borderlands between life and death, between the mythic and the material.

The Voice That Thunders consists of sixteen essays, prepared lectures, and newspaper columns that return to the mythic themes that Garner’s more than half-century of novels explore. The collection is in effect an expressionistic autobiography, where lectures on topics such as education, the state of children’s literature (Garner found himself long-characterized as a “children’s author” because many of his protagonists were young people), and linguistics circle back to the material conditions of Garner’s own early life. Like Nigel Kneale and his childhood home on the Isle of Man, or Alan Moore and his lifetime home of Northampton, or Mark E. Smith and his home and haunt, Salford, all of Garner’s universes, no matter how far afield over the British Isles they may roam, always seem to return, psychologically and mythopoetically, to Alderley Edge.

In the book’s first chapter, a lecture given in 1983, Garner spells out the specifics of his early life and the legends that populated Alderley Edge. While World War II rages outside the fairly idyllic grounds of “the Edge,” young Alan has his own battle against mortality, and an eye-opening, hallucinatory set of experiences in the “forest in the ceiling” of his room while he was recovering from his various childhood illnesses. The mystical road that led into this bedroom fantasyland is connected in some deep way to the Edge and to the various legends told to him by older relations: the faerie tree, once long ago clad in rags beside the Holy Well; an ancient Hero King slumbering in the ground. Garner tells a 1996 audience of headmasters and headmistresses in the book’s second essay that “I assure you that children are, by nature, spiritual beings, until we destroy through our example… A child knows, whether it be in the traditional structure of fairy tale, or the special use of an archaism, when the Mystery is engaged.” Surely we all recognize the impulse of childlike wonder at myths and folktales. But for young Alan, in his throes of illness, myth had a much more important, mature purpose. He managed to use the bits and pieces of myth entrusted to him by the very particular vibrations of locality, the genius loci of Alderley Edge, to deal with the possibility of his own incipient mortality by creating a mythological playground in his own ceiling, complete with symbols of shamanic journey (the road), safety (the wood) and the threat of young death:

Sometimes I would look up, and see no road, no forest, clouds or hills, but a plump little old woman with a circular face, hair parted down the middle and drawn to a tight bun, lips pursed, and small pebbled eyes…

The little old woman came only when my life really was threatened. She was a part of the plaster in the ceiling, not of my room but of my parents’ room, and I was taken there when I was too ill to be left alone. She was my death, and I knew it.

The mythic courses through both the marrow of the very landscape of the Edge and in Garner’s own family bloodline. It is mostly because of the Garners’ long family association with Alderley Edge that he has access to the myths that would inspire his Cheshire-set novels, including his 1960 debut The Weirdstone of Brisingamen and its sequels. Garner’s knowledge of the area led him to a love of archeology from a very early age: his childhood realization that a shovel hanging in a teacher’s classroom might have a neolithic origin is confirmed almost fifty years later by an archeologist friend of Garner’s. Garner also considers the origin and meaning behind one of the folktales told around Alderley Edge and does some armchair ley line-plotting to determine its possible origins in pagan alignments of sun and landscape (all while remaining a bit dubious about possible “arcane conclusions” drawn by most amateur ley line enthusiasts). But Garner’s exploration of the physical landscape—with the complementary eye of a storyteller and straightedge of a mason—allows him to see the pagan Celtic memories thrumming under the local landmarks and place names. The Cheshire of hundreds of years ago is even imprinted on the very language of the inhabitants. The rural Cheshire dialect of his parents and grandparents had kept alive the poetic tongue of the medieval alliterative poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight: “My grandfather was an unlettered smith, but he would have not needed all these footnotes if a native speaker had read the poem to him aloud.” Garner’s ancestors were even carved into the very stone of the countryside; the moss-covered face on the cover of The Voice That Thunders was carved by his great-great-grandfather Robert, a stonemason. Garners were always “makers,” says Alan, his grandfather Joseph one of the last real blacksmiths and whitesmiths in the area, putting his skills to work for both local community and Empire (he made tens of thousands of horseshoes for the British forces in World War I).

But in each generation of craftsmen, Alan Garner writes, there was the undeniable sense of preternatural intelligence chafing at the class-based chains placed on the Garners since time immemorial. Robert had a head for mathematics that found its expression in stonemasonry and in music, as he was a vital member of local brass band; he heard music “listening to the zephyrs in the trees: always in the minor key.” Grandfather Joseph used his own prodigious mathematical mind to memorize London bus timetables, which came to great use during his one trip to London with Alan’s grandmother. Alan clearly saw the postwar British system of wider schooling and competency testing as his way out of a lifetime of manual labor he felt ill-suited for: “[My ancestors] had shaped the place in which I had grown; everywhere I turned, their hands showed me their skills; yet my hands had no cunning; with them I could make nothing, and my family despaired of me.” Garner soon finds that the masons and smiths that populate his mythic memory find expression in his ability to mortar and fuse together words: “[My unique quality] was staring me in the face. It was Robert’s wall. On it was carved his banker mark, the rune Tyr, the boldest of the gods.” Magic and language meet the dignity of manual labor and craftsmanship: all flow together in Garner’s mythic imagination. “One of the first things I discovered when I began was the esoteric meaning of ‘getting aback of.’ Whether it be building walls, mending kettles or writing a book, the activity is the same: it is the pursuit, through dedication, of the godhead.”

As mentioned, many of Garner’s speeches in The Voice That Thunders are delivered to educators, for whom Garner has both a deep respect and words of warning. In his musings on the Cheshire dialect that exists in medieval sources virtually unchanged over a half a millennium, Garner wonders if the standardization of English through formal education has not completely displaced an essential cultural legacy among the regions of Britain with their own traditions in literature and oral storytelling. Garner also tells of the letters he had received from his readers, both children and adults, noting quite strongly that the children who find his books on their own tend to be enchanted and drawn into the worlds he creates, while the children assigned his books as students invariably find them stultifying, boring, or confusing. As someone who owed so much of his own life to education, Garner is sympathetic to what teachers need to accomplish but devastatingly cold to the system that strips students of their imaginations. These letters, in Garner’s words, demonstrate “the headlong enthusiasm children can show for a book, if the reading of it has not been shackled by an adult.”

Which brings us to an aspect of Garner’s life story and The Voice That Thunders that initially simmers under the surface and finally bursts forth fully in a tale of his time on the set of the Granada TV adaptation of The Owl Service: Garner’s struggles with mental illness. Throughout his explications of deep time and of familial trauma and childhood shamanistic journeys, there is the sense that Garner’s gifts leave him on the outside looking in, vouchsafed to deeper truths and mythic realities unseen by most. In a lecture titled “Inner Time,” Garner explores the mental breakdown that occurred on set in Wales as his discomfort with the process culminates in a near-assault on one of The Owl Service cast because of the actor’s inability to take a scene seriously. He retreats from the set and finds himself in the office of a psychotherapist to explore this breakpoint more fully. Garner uses his case to wander through an exploration of the modern condition and how it has created a humanity utterly disconnected from spirituality. This in turn creates an inability to deal with hidden traumas, which Garner calls “engrams.” Garner offers the theory that his connection with myth through his work made him more sensitive to this disconnect: “A writer of fiction, willy-nilly, plants encapsulated engrams in his characters.” Garner’s further work with the therapist brings up a pair of deeply-buried childhood traumas around his childhood illnesses and a fearful first visit to the cinema as a three-year-old (where young Alan was filled with terror at the sight of the Wicked Queen in Snow White). Trauma, buried childhood memory, unaccountable anger, and the threat of death: all linked through the power of a child’s mythic imagination, a man’s attempt to grapple with his life-narrative through storytelling, and buried trauma’s sudden reappearance upon seeing those stories acted out in the real world.

As someone who’s only now, in middle age, begun to explore my own metaphysical associations around childhood and trauma, Garner joins other writers and explorers of the mythic in the role of teacher, fellow explorer—magician, for lack of a better word—who share a need to more deeply understand their lives, to finally see the invisible shackles laid upon us all by place, by family, by history, and by the exercise of political and economic power upon us. But the important lesson to be gathered from Garner’s tales and life story is that none of these shackles are eternal. The myth that is written in our histories is not destiny, and a dedicated “maker,” a runesmith of words and dreams, can craft new tales to deliver themselves out from under the weight of history. “Can we write the world?” Garner asks in “The Voice in the Shadow,” the highlight essay of the collection for me:

We can; if we are willing to pay. The problem with learning to read and being subject to the writing, is that it ends up by being our only way into constructive dreaming. But certain people have innate skills, and they are the visionaries, the poets, those who use language that is the great constructor when it is on the page. They release it into the subconscious by providing us, not with factual information of history, but with ambivalence and the paradox that enables us to interpret what is being said, and what we read, just as we would if we were dreaming. That is the way, via the poet, to the myth, to the truth.

In more succinct form, delivered in a single pair of statements at the beginning of this lecture by Garner: “Believe the fairy tales. What were fairy tales, they will come true.”

Michael Grasso is a Senior Editor at We Are the Mutants. He is a Bostonian, a museum professional, and a podcaster. Follow him on Twitter at @MutantsMichael.

Artwork found at The Library of Congress.

I updated my layout a bit over the last few day here at the old Other Side.


I updated my Books page, which I have not done since 2016 or so.  Witch Links is getting updated more frequently now. I am still unsure if I'll update Downloads or OGL anymore, so they might go.

The biggest update is a new link above to my War of the Witch Queens old-school Campaign.

Here is some of the information I have on that page.

The War of the Witch Queens

The basis of this campaign was something I scrawled on my notes one day while working on one of my books.

"The Witch Queens gather every 13 years to discuss politic, issues of their realms, to share magical discoveries and socialize. But mostly they meet to make sure they stay out of each other's way.  Each Conclave a new High Queen is chosen to make sure that all witches abide by the rules.  This year however one the first day of the Conclave the current High Queen was murdered.
With the High Queen dead and her successor unchosen, the Witches are threatening to go to war with each other and worlds are caught in between."

The idea is these war of these powerful witches will happen.  The PCs get pulled in to this drama and must discover who killed the High Queen and how to stop it.

The Witch Queens 

A big old-school campaign I am working on is War of the Witch Queens.  I have been collecting these NPCs for years.  Not all are Witch Queens, but all have something to do in the campaign and all were at the Conclave of Witches, so each one is a suspect.

I will admit I have some ideas on who the murderer is.  I am also split on which of these will be the victim, though I have two in mind.  Part of the fun here is to build the mystery.

Check the link above for a list of all the Queens and adventures.

In addition to figuring out the mystery, it is also an excuse to try to use as many different D&D-like systems I can.  So DCC, S&S, Labyrinth Lord, OSRIC and D&D proper all live in harmony on my shelves.

Ben Schwartz / January 15, 2020

The hectic, global nightmare of early 2020 seems like a good time to reappraise our perception of Disney, an increasingly powerful demigod in the media-saturated hellscape we live in. Outlets and organs of multiple disciplines put out breathless articles about the conglomerate’s “unprecedented” success last year. A brain-thudding stream of MCU, Star Wars, remakes, a streaming service, sequels, even the long-anticipated arrival of Kingdom Hearts III: it’s a constant content deluge that runs to hundreds of hours and billions of dollars. And this is the new standard, not a freakish exception. Disney continues to run unchecked, requisitioning more and more head- and life-space with gleeful juggernauting rapaciousness. Thus the recent-ish reappearance, in English, of How to Read Donald Duck (Para Leer Al Pato Donald) by Ariel Dorfman and Armand Mattelart, couldn’t come at a better (worse) time.

Originally published in 1971 in Chile during the brief tenure of socialist Salvador Allende and the Unidad Popular government, How to Read Donald Duck scrutinizes the sociopolitical messaging in Disney comics disseminated throughout Chile by the US. The book was first published by Editorial Quimantú, a UP-owned publishing house focused on cultivating literacy and cultural awareness with domestic rather than imported media. Quimantú produced comics of its own, including Cabro Chico and La Firme, that attempted to depict authentic Chilean experience rather than promulgate a mediated American one.

Donald Duck exposes the culture of Disney comics as a quiet inculcation of imperialist doctrine. Disney characters like Donald Duck are imprisoned in a candy-colored vision of capitalist reality: a world full of isolated individuals, unconnected from one another but endlessly kinetic, rocketing from one situation into another—into jobs, feuds, foreign countries (inevitably portrayed as backwards)—in an attempt to grasp some nebulous brass ring that, inevitably, they lose in the extended gutter between the end of one comic and the start of the next.

Dorfman and Mattelart—the former was, at the time, a cultural advisor to Allende, and the latter a Vatican-appointed demographer turned media analyst—grok the “clast” in “iconoclastic”; there’s a destructive glee in Donald Duck, a cheerful violence lobbed at Disney’s insidious, facile world, which punctures many of the hilariously inflated conceptions about Disney. The “Uncle, Buy Me a Contraceptive…” chapter, for my money, murders once and for all the Parent Question. If you’re unfamiliar, the question is: why do so many Disney characters not have parents? You can find film historians, YouTuber film critics, and general Disneyphiles somberly attributing the answer to tragedies in Walt Disney’s own life, mythological reference, and/or attempts to create independent thinkers out of children. Dorfman and Mattelart see something much more sinister:

In Disney, characters only function by virtue of a suppression of real and concrete factors; that is, their personal history, their birth and death, and their whole development in between, as they grow and change. Since they are not engendered by any biological act, Disney characters may aspire to immortality: whatever apparent, momentary sufferings are inflicted upon them in the course of their adventures, they have been liberated, at least, from the curse of the body.

A Disney character comes ready-made, optimized to function eternally in the false worlds created for him. In the comics under examination, that world is a capitalist, imperialist vacuum. Capitalism is fundamentally prudish, obsessed with order, control, regulation. Rejection of biological origin neatly eliminates the messy reality of human interdependence and community. Imperialism inherently fears being beholden to someone or something external, precisely because that’s the relationship it imposes on everything around it. So, parentless as any product, Disney characters don’t owe anybody anything. They’re free to define themselves exclusively through their actions, however hollow those actions might ultimately be. This is one example among many in this slender little fulgurant. Donald Duck is literally packed with figurative explosives of equal brisance. For six chapters, Dorfman and Mattelart keep digging and dynamiting their way through the Disney mythos. Naturally, they attack the easy targets with scholastic thoroughness and writerly aplomb: the racism, sexism, and jingoism prevalent in Disney comics. But they go far beyond that and arrive at a diagnosis of the (very contagious) American Sickness:

The threat [of the comics to Chile] derives not so much from their embodiment of the ‘American Way of Life,’ as that of the ‘American Dream of Life.’ It is the manner in which the U.S. dreams and redeems itself, then imposes that dream upon others for its own salvation, which poses the danger for the dependent countries.

That dream is one of Innocence, a vision of eternal, misremembered childhood simplicity projected by prudish, frightened, powerful adults. The American impulse careers manically toward simplicity, a reduction of everything to Good or Bad, Positive or Negative, Profit or Deficit, Winner or Loser. And as an imperialist force, when its binary worldview doesn’t map onto reality, it’s the fault of the franchisee, not the franchiser. This, Donald Duck says, is the central falsity of Disney, as dangerous as a hundred other American fantasies: the Noble Loner, the War Worth Fighting, the Good Cop.

In Chile, Disney, like the US, is an invasive species. What crosses borders as an innocent entertainment is in fact a foreign contagion working to assimilate the local hosts. This happens literally as well as figuratively. Disney comics are subcontracted to domestic printers and writers. Thus, in 1974, a year after Pinochet’s junta took over, there was this explicitly pro-violence, anti-Allende Disney comic in the Chile Monitor:

As Dorfman and Mattelart point out, the messaging isn’t always this explicit, but it extends logically from the values instilled by US-made Disney comics. As How to Read Donald Duck’s English translator David Kunzleman says, “The native contributes directly to his own colonization.”

The domestic-undomestic Disney comic is a particularly ugly metaphor for the relationship between the US and Chile in the ‘70s. It’s no secret that American interests were firmly against an Allende presidency, and it’s a safe bet that US politicking and influence at the very least exacerbated the conditions that led to the Pinochet junta. From there it’s not a very long mental walk to some umbrageous extrapolations regarding the present-day situation in Chile and the protests and struggles going on there (already forgotten by the magpie US media).

Donald Duck is a timely book for this very ugly present moment. But too, it finds universality in its particularity. In its depiction of subsumed messages in Disney comics it reveals the threat of brain colonization facing any human consuming media. To some degree, this process is inevitable, involuntary. As an adult I hate Disney, hate everything it’s ever done and all of its glittering, superficial, asinine media properties. But after decades of exposure, much of it “willing” when I was a child, some residue remains inside me that reverberates to the sterile Disney fantasy: its cleanness, its simplicity, its comfort and ease.

So, among the lessons to be found in Donald Duck are: Everything Says Something; and also: Everything Leaves a Mark. Directly and indirectly, people are shaped by what they read, watch, hear, play. Indiscriminate consumption leaves wounds, and neglecting to consider the Hows and Whys of what we take in, whether that’s the latest curlicued Disney confection or the Kojiki is, in very real ways, socially and morally irresponsible. Discriminate consumption also leaves wounds, but if we’re conscious of what we’ve consumed, if we’re vigilant about what it can do to us and others, maybe we can, somehow, become better. As it was upon its initial release, How to Read Donald Duck is an exhilarating taste of sanity in an ugly, ugly time.

OR Books released How to Read Donald Duck in 2018 for first time in the US since the original 1975 edition was seized by Customs at the behest of Disney. It includes a new introduction by Ariel Dorfman in addition to the original preface to the English edition by Dorfman and Mattelart, as well as the introduction to the English edition by David Kunzleman. As mentioned above, Kunzleman did the English translation and it is excellent. A new appendix includes a piece by John Shelton Lawrence called “Donald Duck vs. Chilean Socialism: A Fair Use Exchange,” which is also well worth reading.

Ben Schwartz is a freelance writer working out of Ohio.

 

 

this is just a look at the state of my acw wargaming project...

(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 →

Wizards of the Coast just announced their next book for Dungeons & Dragons 5e and it has some sections of the fandom wailing in lamentations, but the vast majority excited about it.

Explorer's Guide to Wildemount will be out in Spring 2020 and it covers the part of the world from the highly successful Critical Role webseries.  Now I can already hear the older crowd bitching and moaning about it and all I can say is "typical".

There are people out there complaining that "Wizards has pissed off half their fans".  I would argue that "half" is really exaggerating it by quite a bit, but even so then they are at least pleasing the other half.

There are others that are also talking about how they won't be buying this. Ok. That's fine you don't need to buy every D&D book.  I enjoy 5e and I don't even have every book.  I have most, but I don't have them all.

But even then, these people are often the same ones that will claim never to have bought a WotC D&D book ever anyway, so they were never the audience.

Personally, I think this is a really intelligent move on Wizard's part.

Critical Role is hugely successful.

The Kickstarter for just the animated series brought in $11,385,449.   And this book, announced just 48 hours or so ago, has all the relevant #1 spots on Amazon.


Note that's not just #1 in the D&D categories, that is #1 in Books.  All of them.

Would I, as an old-school gamer, love to have seen Greyhawk or Mystara?  Of course!  Do I *need* them? No, not really.  I have everything I need for those worlds now.  I have MORE than what I need for my home-brew world now.  New worlds are always fun to read and maybe I can use some things from that book in my world. Or maybe not.  Who knows yet.

I do know that some sections of our hobby need to lighten the hell up and let people enjoy things.

Fred McNamara / January 14, 2020

The sci-fi Supermarionation shows produced by Gerry Anderson’s AP Films/Century 21 Productions offer something for every generation, and contemporary celebrations of them focus on what made them popular in the first place: the painstaking and glorious depiction of futuristic, wildly imaginative mecha—space rockets, supersonic jets, submarines, tunnelers, all capable of breathtaking maneuvers and armed with explosive firepower—that effortlessly tapped into the minds of a generation rapidly being turned on to the visual thrills of science fiction in mainstream media.

These magnificent machines often walked a fine line between accuracy and fantasy. Much has been written, for instance, about the physics of the Thunderbirds and whether or not they could actually fly, reflecting the real-world influence these shows have. Young fans at the time, however, probably didn’t concern themselves with such thoughts but simply marveled at the aesthetic joy of the models—chiefly designed by Reg Hill, Derek Meddings, and Mike Trim—being flung across rolling backdrops or back-screen projections of otherworldly landscapes. These vibrant machines are a large part of the ongoing appeal of Thunderbirds, Stingray, Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons, and Gerry Anderson’s other productions, so let’s examine their attributes in further detail.

A Wonderland of Monochrome (Supercar and Fireball XL5)

Despite the wonders that would explode onto our screens when the likes of Thunderbirds and Captain Scarlet came along, the mecha of Century 21 had fairly primitive beginnings. Their first show to be promoted as being filmed in Supermarionation, Supercar (1961-1962), furnished the rough blueprint of all that would follow. With compact yet gaudy design by series producer Reg Hill, the titular vehicle’s abilities reflected the ambitions of Century 21 Productions, then known as AP Films, to create first-class entertainment. Though it was predominantly used as a form of aerial transport, Supercar possessed the ability to journey through the sky, outer space, on land, and under the oceans. Its quirky exterior appearance and cramped interior cockpit were less imaginative than later designs like Thunderbird 2 and the SPV, but the machine still plays an indispensable role in Supermarionation’s history. It paved the groundwork for what would follow.

Fireball XL5 was as much a leap in premise as it was in aesthetic. A bold, imposing design courtesy of Derek Meddings, Fireball had a degree of realism injected into it via the craft’s detachable, Space Shuttle-esque component Fireball Junior, which both complemented the series’ sense of adventure and, inevitably, augmented its merchandising potential. With its imposing cylindrical length enabling it to shoot across the stars like a dart, the craft looks infinitely more robust and evocative than Supercar, and, perhaps most important, it looked like it could actually fly. Enhanced by the outer space setting, the powerful aesthetic of Fireball XL5 captured young fans’ imaginations with cosmic aplomb. After all, the flagship security, rescue, and combat vessel of the World Space Patrol needs to look like it can do the job.

Stand by for Rescue (Stingray and Thunderbirds)

The Stingray, from the 1964 series of the same name, marked a progressive step forward for the chief mecha of Supermarionation. Designed by Hill, the craft’s perfectly formed amphibious appeal lay not just in its exterior, but in its interior too. The increased budget furnished by financial backer Lew Grade allowed AP Films to fashion an extremely chic, futuristic style for Stingray’s control decks, sleeping quarters, and relaxation areas, an aesthetic firmly entrenched in 1960s fashions. And Stingray was filmed in color. The swirling blue, yellow, and grey of Stingray’s exterior and its smooth, contoured shape give the craft a wonderfully distinctive vibe, effortlessly tapping into the aquatic themes of the show. The guest vehicles in the show also impressed. Some of the submarines themselves were clearly kit-bashed from other sources, such as the Big Gun from “The Big Gun,” clearly modeled on a tank, and the craft from “Sea of Oil” was quite obviously taken from a jet. With these vehicles often making an appearance in only a single episode, their interior designs were often redressed from craft to craft, with props culled from previous models.

Thunderbirds marked the point where Derek Meddings and cohort Mike Trim started working in tandem: Meddings designed much of International Rescue’s core craft, prioritizing sharp bulk and heft, while Trim took care of secondary/guest vehicles, producing more streamlined and sinuous craft. The aerial gymnastics of the sleek, supersonic first responder Thunderbird 1 starts the action of each episode, complemented by the lumbering, powerful Thunderbird 2, the most recognizable of all of the Andersons’ mecha and a craft that fills the screen whenever it takes off, soars through the skies, or lands in some danger zone. Thunderbird 3 is more of a curiosity, since we only ever see it in a handful of episodes, yet it remains another of Meddings’ fascinatingly gargantuan designs. The trim, squat Thunderbird 4 is everything Supercar should have been, while the immobility of space station Thunderbird 5 is at odds with its sophisticated, complex design and exposed mechanics.

The separate functions of each of the five Thunderbirds gives the show a visual depth and sense of scale. No one Thunderbird performs the same function, and that specialization enables International Rescue’s daring and eye-catching missions to be fully realized. Thunderbirds distinguished itself from past Supermarionation fare by not placing all of its toys in one sandbox: the aerodynamics of Thunderbirds 1 and 2, the space-based Thunderbird 3, the sub-aquatic Thunderbird 4, and the watchful, sentinel-esque role of Thunderbird 5 gave the series its panoramic sense of adventure.

Most Special Mecha (Captain Scarlet, Joe 90, and The Secret Service)

The post-Thunderbirds shows marked the rise of Mike Trim as the main designer of the vehicles tasked with communicating the action and energy of Supermarionation. With the more senior figures of Century 21 Productions chiefly concerned with expanding the company’s cinematic division, it fell chiefly to the younger staff to handle production of the TV series. By the time The Secret Service (1969) went into production, day-to-day operations were being supervised by Hill, with Gerry and Sylvia Anderson focusing their efforts on 1969 science-fiction film Doppelgänger.

With Captain Scarlet, for which Meddings produced Cloudbase, the SPV (Spectrum Pursuit Vehicle), and the Angel Interceptors, it was Trim’s responsibility to design the remainder of Spectrum’s wide variety of vehicles and guest mecha. Spectrum’s mecha reflect the military aesthetic of the series: gone are the vibrant colors and evocative names of the Thunderbird machines. In their place are stern, somber colors, chiefly greys and cold blues, with acronyms mainly used for naming conventions. The monolithic presence of Cloudbase, the grandest mecha of any Supermarionation show, now serves as a ubiquitous reminder of Spectrum’s watchful presence over the world.

Elsewhere, Spectrum’s core mecha veer between the bulky and the nimble. The tank-like SPV and the sorely underused MSV (Maximum Security Vehicle) further underline Spectrum’s hawkish vocation, yet even though the SPC (Spectrum Patrol Car), SPJ (Spectrum Passenger Jet), and the Angel Interceptors are far slicker, more agile vehicles, all evoke perfectly the darker attitude of the show, especially when compared to Thunderbirds. Like the guest vehicles he designed for Thunderbirds, Trim’s other mecha for Captain Scarlet continue the streamlined shapes from before, helping to give the futuristic setting of the series a visual immediacy.

Compared to the fleets of vehicles found in Thunderbirds and Stingray, Joe 90 (1968-1969) boasted a far more limited array of core mecha, Professor Mac’s car and Sam Loover’s saloon being the only vehicles that regularly appeared in the show. Mac’s car is a marked departure from past designs. Here, Meddings takes a significantly experimental approach, producing a vehicle that harks back to the days of Supercar: a cumbersome mecha characterized by exposed components, easily the least elegant thing he ever produced. Professor Mac’s car is either delightfully quirky or off-puttingly clunky, depending on your point of view. Fortunately, Trim delivers a further batch of handsome companion vehicles throughout the series that are very similar in flavor to the mecha of Captain Scarlet.

The Secret Service (1969) took things to extremes by not featuring a core vehicle of a futuristic design at all. A re-fashioned 1917 Ford Model T, Gabriel is the furthest departure from the retro-futuristic visions the Andersons were famous for producing. Again, more companion vehicles do appear scattered throughout, but the limited number of episodes for the series—a grand total of 13—meant that the blade fell prematurely on the reign of Supermarionation, and with it the eye-popping display of ingenuity and creativity of the company’s vehicle department. The Century 21 team would continue to entertain viewers with the live-action productions Doppelganger and UFO (1970-1973), but the evocative, sometimes nearly anthropomorphic designs that had defined the visual action of the puppet shows would end here.

Tomorrow’s Cross-Sections Today

Beyond the style of the craft, then, what exactly has been written about their functionality? Some basic details of the craft’s capabilities and mechanics had been mapped out by Anderson, but it would fall to those at Century 21 Publishing to flesh these details out. One of the many arms that Century 21 Productions grew as the company blossomed in commercial success, the publishing division’s in-depth cross-sections were produced to delight readers and published in both the TV21 comic and annuals produced to tie-in with each series.

Fascination with these mecha remains strong 50 years on, and book-length collections of cross-sections exist almost as a distinct subculture within Anderson fandom. As revivals of Stingray, Thunderbirds, and Captain Scarlet have come and gone since the 1990s, fresh interpretations of Anderson mecha have been produced, and books that collect past material continue to sell, as do original works, such as the pair of ever-popular Haynes Manuals written and drawn for Thunderbirds and Captain Scarlet. Packed with in-depth examinations of the functionality and interior of the shows’ respective craft, these books are testament to the imaginative response the vehicles of Supermarionation continue to inspire.

Fred McNamara spends an immeasurable and unhealthy amount of time overthinking indie comics, cult television, and retro sci-fi. He co-edits the superhero/indie comic book hub A Place To Hang Your Cape. He’s also the author of Spectrum is Indestructible, the unofficial celebration of Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons. He’s game for watching anything involving puppets.

The Temptation of Saint Anthony, 1940

The Temptation of Saint Anthony, 1937

Images found at Biblioklept

Otto Dix was previously mentioned here in 2007.

The Horned Women of Celtic Myth

The horned women, or horned witches, are magical hags of Irish myth and legend.  They pester newly married young women or new mothers.  They are also known to plague any sort of homeowner.


Horned Women are a particularly nasty creature that is related to both faeries and hags.
They will appear as ugly old women with a horn protruding from their forehead. How many horns will tell you how powerful they are. A woman with one horn has 1 HD and so on.  It is unknown if this is related to age, all appear to ancient hags.

They will rush into a home, especially that of a new young mother or wife, and begin performing chores at a breakneck speed. While they perform the chores each one will demand a task of the overwhelmed bride. Saying that if she does not complete the tasks, they will fly off and eat her baby. The tasks are designed to be seemingly impossible; chop wood with an ax handle with no blade, or collect water in a bucket full of holes, or make a cake with no flour. The tasks can be completed by the bride, but she has to be clever about it.

Their voice is compelling, as per the suggestion spell, to get the wife to do these tasks.  A save vs spells will keep this from happening, but the threat of eating her baby is still real.

If she can do all the tasks the Horned Women want they will scream and fly away never to return. If she doesn’t they will take the baby.

Horned Women cast witch spells at the same level as their HD. They do not have access to ritual magic or occult powers.

Witches are often employed to fight these creatures.
Using a simple spell (typically dispel evil or remove curse) and adding "Witch! Witch! Fly away from here!"
The horned women will fly away and never return to that house.

Horned Women
(Labyrinth Lord)
No. Enc.: 1-8 (1-12)
Alignment: Chaotic (evil)
Movement: 80' (240')
Armor Class: 3 [16]
Hit Dice: 1** (5 hp) to 8** (36 hp)
Attacks: 1 (claw)
Damage: 1d6
Special: Witch spells, compelling voice
Save: Witch 1 to Witch 8
Morale: 10
Hoard Class: None
XP: HD 1: 13, HD 2: 29,  HD 3: 68, HD 4:  135, HD 5: 350, HD 6: 570,  HD 7: 790, HD 8: 1,060

Horned Women
(Blueholme Journeymanne Rules)
AC: 3 [16]
HD: 1d8 to 8d8
Move: 80
Attacks: : 1 (claw, 1d6), Witch spells, compelling voice
Alignment: Chaotic
Treasure: None
XP: HD 1: 45, HD 2: 70,  HD 3: 95, HD 4:  145, HD 5: 255, HD 6: 395,  HD 7: 650, HD 8: 950

Horned Women
(Old-School Essentials)
AC 3 [16], HD 1 (5 hp) 8 (36 hp), Att 1 claw (1d6), THAC0 19 [+1], MV 240’ (80’), SV as W 1-8, ML 10, AL Chaotic, XP HD 1: 45, HD 2: 70,  HD 3: 95, HD 4:  145, HD 5: 255, HD 6: 395,  HD 7: 650, HD 8: 950, NA 1-8 (1-12), TT None
▶ Witch spells: The horned woman can cast spells as a witch at the same level as her HD.
▶ Compelling Voice: The horned woman's voice acts as a suggestion spell.  She may use this once per day.

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: We Are All Savages: A Colonial Scenario for Call of Cthulhu, 7th Edition

Publisher: Chaosium, Inc.
Author: William Adcock

Setting: The French and Indian War

Product: Scenario
What You Get: 29.01 MB thirty seven-page, full colour PDF
Elevator Pitch: Survival Horror in the Snow. 
Plot Hook: Snow, Scurvy, Starvation, and Worse at the far of the British Empire.
Plot Development: Missing supplies, blood on the snow, the worst winter, and a terrible confrontation.
Plot Support: Floorplans of Fort Niagra, six pre-generated characters, six illustrations, musket stats.

Pros
# One-two session one-shot
# Unique historical location
# Strong use of weather and location
# Strongly plotted
# Potential convention scenario
# Technology presents its own challenges
# Six solid pre-generated characters
# Potential Colonial Gothic one-shot

Cons# Tightly plotted
# Unfamiliar setting to non-Americans
# Not suitable for the new Keeper
# Works best with six players
# Limited options for the players
# Military scenario

Conclusion
# Strong use of weather and location
# Military scenario in an unfamiliar period and setting
# Potential one-session one-shot convention scenario

The Benton Hussars Project.

So, my union cavalry needs two regiments, I chose the first one to be the Benton Hussars, a formation raised in St. Louis, Mo. of european immigrants, mostly  liberal germans who fled after the 1848 resurgence of militant right wing monarchies... the unit borrowed uniform inspiration from the flashy light cavalry of Europe, but toned down a bit.  Still it is distinctive, and I think will look great as models.

 First I did research

 

Not too many references, but Almark books and haythorthwaites Uniforms of the Civil war feature plates, short hussar style shell jacket, shoes, a sort of shako..So, on to making a master model, this is kitbashed from toy soldier bits and sculpting with jb weld plumbers epoxy putty.

Ashen Stars is Pelgrane Press’ Science Fiction roleplaying game of investigation and action. Using the investigation-orientated Gumshoe System mechanics written by Robin D. Laws, it takes the idea that Space Opera stories, especially those screened on television, are essentially mysteries to be solved and adapts it to an interesting frontier setting. This is the Bleed, a rough, wild fringe of space that barely twenty years ago was the enticingly glamorous frontier of The Combine, a two-hundred-year-old interstellar, culture-spanning government dedicated to peace, understanding, and self-determination. The Combine was an idealistic utopia that enabled numerous races and peoples to live happily under its governance, but then the Mohilar attacked, and employing technologies unknown to The Combine, their vast war fleets stormed system after system until The Combine’s heart, Earth itself, was devastated. Then following an unexpected defeat at the hands of a last-ditch effort by what remained of Combine forces, they vanished. That was a decade ago and yet, due to an effect known as the Bogey Conundrum, memories of the Mohilar race have become hazy and inconsistent. Try as they might, no one call recall exactly what the Mohilar were, and certainly, no one has any idea where they are now…

In the wake of the Mohilar War, both the interstellar economy and government have collapsed and whilst The Combine exists, its reach has been pulled back from the Bleed. Thus, the worlds the Bleed, many scorched and blasted by war, have been left to their own devices, bound only by a common currency and cultural ties. Where Combine patrols once kept the peace, peacekeeping missions and criminal investigations are now put out to private tender and assigned to independent ship operators known as ‘Licensed Autonomous Zone Effectuators’ or ‘Lasers’. As Lasers, the player characters will crew and operate a ship on a tight budget, hoping to pick up assignments that if completed will enhance their reputation and so lead to better and more profitable assignments.

Since its publication in 2011, Ashen Stars has received only slight support, all of it the form of scenarios, such as Dead Rock Seven and The Justice Trade. Accretion Disk is support of a different kind, a supplement which takes its name from the structure formed by diffuse material in orbital motion around a massive central body, typically a star. In terms of a roleplaying supplement what we have in Accretion Disc is a collection of unrelated material—new character options, new playable species, new ability options, new weapons and equipment, new contracts, new aliens, and more. Accretion Disc is essentially, the Ashen Stars Companion.

The supplement wastes no time in getting down to business. The first fifth of Accretion Disk is devoted to Investigative Abilities—knowledges which get the Lasers clues, and General Abilities—skills and so on which allow the Lasers to act. Every entry for an Investigative Ability includes sample benefits from Spends of an Ability and sample clues and plot hooks, whilst for General Abilities include possible investigative clues and possible ‘Cherries’. So for the Data Retrieval Technical Ability, a Laser’s player might spend a point to protect the team’s own data or disseminate an enemy’s secrets to the general public, whilst sample clues and plot hooks include being able to access the captain’s logs of a crashed spaceship, determine clues from a ransom video in a kidnap case, and so on. 

‘Cherries’ were introduced in Night’s Black Agents [http://rlyehreviews.blogspot.com/2012/11/kiss-kiss-fang-fang.html] specifically to meet its thriller angle. Now, as with Night’s Black Agents, if a Laser in Ashen Stars has a General Ability with a rating of eight or more, he is regarded as being skilled enough to gain a special benefit. So for example, with an Athletics score of eight or more, a Laser have the ‘Hard to Hit’ and so become harder to target in combat, or he might take the Might Cherry for his high Athletics Ability, enabling his player to expend points from his Athletics Ability pool after the roll rather than before. Other Cherries give simple points in other Abilities or a free pool of points to spend on specific things. For example,  ‘Follow the Money’ for the Business Affairs General Ability, grants a free point in the Forensic Accounting Academic Investigative Ability, whilst the ‘Viro Wizardry’ Cherry for the Viro Manipulation General Ability to provide the Lazers with an extra pool of points to spend on the second use of a one-use Viroware. Overall, the section on Abilities—Investigative and General—is useful for both Game Master and player alike, adding further helpful description and utility. In general, the use of the Cherries also make the play of the game more cinematic in flavour and feel. Even further the write-up of the Flattery Interpersonal Investigative Ability is amusingly, exactly what it says it is.

‘Crewing Up’ expands upon the discussion of the Warpside and Groundside mission roles of the Lasers from the Ashen Stars core rulebook. It provides a list of the basic Investigative and General Abilities needed for each role, a discussion of the role, the role’s typical day-to-day routine, suggested equipment loadouts, specialised techniques and jargon, and classic media archetypes. So a Communications Officer or Hailer will be receiving communications, dealing with clients, tracking and analysing signals, hacking, and so on. He might be a polished corporate spokesman, an eccentric hacker/DJ, a military signals expert, harried technician, and more. Again, there is a lot of information here for both Game Master and player, giving the former ideas on how to bring them into play and the latter ideas on how to play each role. 

One of the aspects of Ashen Stars and of Gumshoe System roleplaying games in general is its direct implementation of Drives and Arcs to help involve Lasers in campaigns and plots. In the core rule book for Ashen Stars, they are discussed from the Game Master’s point of view since she is the one who will be implementing them. In Accretion Disk, they are examined from the player’s point of view. There are some general suggestions on how each player might bring them into play and do it judiciously, plus three sample Arc Drives for each. Ashen Stars then adds six new playable species to the Seven Peoples of the Combine, some of whom have held more prominent positions in the past. They include the warty, boney Cloddhuck, who once revered the Durugh as gods and served them as shock troops, but since the Mohilar War have used their combat intuition as mercenaries and criminals, and now, to solve crime! The Haydrossi evolved in the atmosphere of a gas giant and can not only float, but have excellent three dimensional spatial awareness and are driven to seek new places in search of a lost utopia. Unfortunately, they are not covered by the treaties which forbid the Kth-thk from eating certain sentient species. The Icti inhabit and animate the fresh corpses of the recently dead, the higher up the food chain the better, and can access the memories that the corpses had in life as well as preventing their newly inhabited ‘meat-shells’ from truly rotting for years. It is entirely for a Laser to die in game and his player chose to have come back as an Icti! The Ndoaites are even weirder, shell-residing lizards who consume radioactive ores and whose bowel movements are classed as type II biohazards. Consequently, as Lasers they serve Warpside happily, but send drones to represent them when Groundside. They can also generate and emit radiation, often in modulated, targeted bursts. The Racondids are bipedal reptiles overconfidently keen on the Combine and seeking out new challenges with a rapid metabolism which allows them to vomit flammable material! Lastly, the Verpid are a corporate-owned species, genetically engineered to change shape and have fled their masters in an act of self-emancipation.   

All six of the new races are interesting and different, but not necessarily useful or much-needed additions to Ashen Stars. They are again, another option for a campaign. More useful though are the sets of deck plans for the six most commonly used ships used by Laser teams. From the stalwart, reliable Runner to highly defensive, but uncomfortable Porcupine, all of the ins and outs of these vessels are discussed, as their foibles and quirks. If there is an issue here it that the deck plans are presented in greyscale rather than colour, so much of their definition and detail is lost. Accompanying this is a selection of new ‘Ship Bolt-Ons’, complete with Cost and Upkeep values, such as the Cannon-Nanny which prevents shipboard weapons from being used by over-zealous gunners so as to prevent Public Relations disasters or Particle Streamers which stream and excite particles hamper attempts by attackers to lock on and tow the ship. Shuttles receive a similar treatment with several alternatives to the standard shuttle carried by most Laser vessels, including Cargo Shuttles and Racing Shuttles. As does the section on personal technology, which includes a communications device, cybernetic enhancements, medical, forensic, and protective gear, and miscellaneous and investigative tech, viroware, and more. Players will enjoy the Dirty Harry Mod which makes a Disruptor weapon look a whole bigger and thus more intimidating; the Muckraker Suite, semi-intelligent systems and customised software for digging up dirt on a target; and the Wingman Ultra, which enables a Laser to mimic a colleague or friend’s Interpersonal skills, including of course, Flirting.

Rounding out Accretion Disk are over thirty ‘Hot Contracts’, giving the Game Master a wide array of tasks for the players’ team of Lasers to undertake, followed by an expansion to the ‘Entity Database’ with twelve new monsters and creatures. Lastly, the appendices provide rules for ‘Ashen Stars Warp’, a stripped down version of the rules with fewer skills and abilities. This is also intended for convention play where quicker mechanics might be of use.

Physically, Accretion Disk is cleanly laid out, decently edited, and nicely illustrated. It comes with a good index too. The only downside to the supplement is that it is presented in greyscale rather than colour, and some of the artwork—and certainly the deckplans—would have benefited from being in full colour.

Until now, Ashen Stars has not had a supplement to support both its play and its setting. Accretion Disk fulfills that need, with an array of useful and interesting bits and pieces, some of them connected—for example, the deckplans, the ship bolt-ons, and the shuttles—some not. Given the time between the publication of Ashen Stars and the publication of Accretion Disk, this is the supplement that will bring veteran players of the roleplaying back to play with its selection of new options, or support a group coming to the roleplaying game for the first time with advice and expanded explanations. 

Accretion Disk is more than welcome support for Ashen Stars, not necessary to play, but helpful, useful options and advice to expand and support a campaign. The perfect companion to Ashen Stars.

Images found thanks to Jean Louis Mazieres and Rex Harris.  A detailed description of the painting can be found at Wikipedia.

Much like the Miskatonic Repository for Call of Cthulhu, Seventh Edition, the  Jonstown Compendium is a curated platform for user-made content, but for material set in Greg Stafford's mythic universe of Glorantha. It enables creators to sell their own original content for RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha and HeroQuest Glorantha (Questworlds). This can include original scenarios, background material, cults, mythology, details of NPCs and monsters, and so on, but none of this content should be considered to be ‘canon’, but rather fall under ‘Your Glorantha Will Vary’. This means that there is still scope for the authors to create interesting and useful content that others can bring to their Glorantha-set campaigns.


—oOo—

What is it?
Arrows of War is a short, two-session scenario set in Dragon Pass during Dark Season easily run as part of the Colymar campaign begun in RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha – QuickStart Rules and Adventure and then continued in and around Apple Lane as detailed in the RuneQuest Gamemaster Screen Pack, specifically before the events of the scenario, ‘The Dragon of the Thunder Hills’.

It is a five page, full colour, 2.0 MB PDF.

Arrows of War is well presented and decently written, but needs an edit in places. The internal artwork is okay, but the map is decent.

Where is it set?
Arrows of War by default takes place in Apple Lane in the lands of the Colymar tribe and then near Runegate in Dark Season 1625.

If run as part of the Colymar Campaign, it is best run before The Throat of Winter: Terror in the Depths, before the onset of the worst of Dark Season.

Who do you play?
The scenario does not have any strict requirements in terms of the characters needed, but warriors, entertainers, and priests will all be useful.

What do you need?
Arrows of War can be run using just RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha. If the Game Master is running the Colymar campaign in and around, then the RuneQuest Gamemaster Screen Pack is recommended.

Although optional, The Armies and Enemies of Dragon Pass will provide more information about the Gloranthan warfare depicted in the scenario, whilst The Eleven Lights will explain the significance of the scenario’s cosmic events.

What do you get?
In the wake of the Dragonrise, King Pharandros of Tarsh reacts to Kallyr Starbrow’s revolt by sending a large Tarshite army to reinforce Lunar rule in Alda-Chur. In response, she petitions the tribes for warriors and the summons are issued across the tribal lands, including to the player characters.

In contrast to the events the characters will have participated in as indicated by ‘Step 2: Family History’ of the Adventurers chapter of the RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha core rulebook during character generation, Arrows of War is not a scenario in which they take part in a great event or battle. Although a battle does take place—at Dangerford—the player characters, along with many of their fellow tribesmen, are stationed elsewhere and can only wait and watch in case the Tarshite army and its Lunar allies attack there.

Arrows of War is about the call to war, preparing for it, and its aftermath, rather than the fighting involved. As a scenario, it is not as obviously dramatic as getting involved in a showdown between Sartarite and Lunar forces would be, but there is plenty of scope for drama and roleplaying within the events it describes. In the main, these involve a lot of waiting and marching and waiting, with suggested small events along the way. It is also about military camp life and the anticipation of battle rather than battle itself. Throughout, the scenario suggestions are given as to what skills might be used and why, many of them less commonly used skills.

Although none are detailed in Arrows of War, the scenario represents an opportunity for the Game Master to bring in NPCs for the player characters to interact with, either of his own creation, or drawn from the backgrounds of the player characters created during ‘Step 2: Family History’ of character creation.

Is it worth your time?
Yes. Although Arrows of War places the player characters on the periphery of events in Sartar, it highlights the importance of those events as well as their consequences, as well as providing opportunities for both roleplaying and skill use. It is a another decent scenario to run as part of the Colymar-set campaign from the RuneQuest Gamemaster Screen Pack in and around Apple Lane, one that will benefit from the addition of some named NPCs.
No. If you are running a campaign set further away from Colymar, then Arrows of War may not be of use to you. Its events could be adapted to other battles though.
Maybe. Arrows of War can be run using groups from further away, adapted to other battles, or even with some effort, run for a group of Lunar or Lunar Tarshite characters.

Because as bad as January can get, we’re still a ways off from purple mohawks and bondage pants…so far.

Among many other things, the ReptiCon Dallas show marks the beginning of a new decade for the Texas Triffid Ranch: we’re now a fifth of the way through the Twenty-First Century, so it’s time to act like it. For the … Continue reading →

I was considering retiring "Kickstart Your Weekend" since there are so many Kickstarters now and plenty of places to get information on them.  But these two are nearer and dearer to me so I thought it would be fine.

Plus it was Bowie's birthday a couple of days ago (Jan 8) and today is the anniversary of his death (Jan 10, 2016), so for Bowie's sake let's be Heroes.

The Hero's Journey 2e


https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/gallantknightgames/the-heros-journey-2e?ref=theotherside

The Hero's Journey 1st edition was a delightful game. It was the perfect antidote for grim-dark murder hobo games that seem to be so popular.  A nice cup of tea vs whatever they sell in the local run-down dive where characters are supposed to meet.

This new 2nd edition gets further away from it's S&W roots and that might be a good thing.
James Spahn has delivered when it comes to games, so I have expectations for this one.

What I loved about THJ1 was that the characters were the heroes, people doing good in the world.  I think we need more of that.

Really looking forward to this one and I hope to see it in my local game store sometime.


Full-Color Custom Miniatures with Hero Forge 2.0


https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/heroforge/full-color-custom-miniatures-with-hero-forge-20?ref=theotherside

This one does not go live till next week, but you can bet it is going to break all sorts of records.
I was a proud backer of Hero Forge and I have enjoyed watching it grow over the years to be the standard by which I judge 3D printed minis.  If they can do the color they are displaying above then this is the reason why Kickstarter exists.

I can't wait to see this.  Will the minis be costly? Maybe, but I have been pleased with the prices on Hero Forge so far so I am expecting this will be similar.

If the timing is right I'll come back with a follow-up to this post with a color 3D Hero Forge mini of my Hero's Journey character!

Trouble on the Steel Pier: A Dystopia Rising: Evolution Jumpstart is a quick-start for a Dystopia Rising: Evolution, a Post Apocalypse roleplaying game from Onyx Path Publishing. It provides everything necessary for a gaming group to give the roleplaying game a try and perhaps even use it as the starter scenario to a campaign set in the dark future of Dystopia Rising: Evolution, including a basic explanation of the rules, a six-scene scenario, and five pre-generated player characters. The setting of Dystopia Rising: Evolution is an America some generations after the outbreak of a zombie virus brought about an apocalypse. In the decades since, the survivors have not only learned to adapt and get by, but mutated into several distinct Lineages. In more recent times, the cities, long fallen and crumbled, have formed the bones upon which new and vibrant settlements have been built, trade and travel have been established once again, and societies have begun to be formed. The setting for the scenario, ‘Trouble on Steel Pier’, is the Big A.C., a place of glitz, glamour, and danger within the post-apocalyptic wasteland. Here are opportunities for trade, for work, for entertainment, but also criminality, murder, and more…

Unlike other Jumpstarts and roleplaying games from Onyx Path Publishing which use the Storyteller system, Trouble on the Steel Pier: A Dystopia Rising: Evolution Jumpstart employs the Storypath system. The latter can be best described as a distillation of the former and certainly anyone familiar with the Storyteller system will find that it has a lot in common with the Storypath system, except that the Storypath system is simpler and streamlined, designed for slightly cinematic, effect driven play. The core mechanic uses dice pools of ten-sided dice, typically formed from the combination of a skill and an attribute, for example Pilot and Dexterity to sail a boat, Survival and Stamina to cross a wilderness, and Persuasion and Manipulation to unobtrusively get someone to do what a character wants. These skill and attribute combinations are designed to be flexible, with a character’s preferred method being described as a character’s Favoured Approach. So a character whose Favoured Approach is Force, would use Close Combat and Might in a melee fight; if Finesse, Close Combat and Dexterity; and if Resilience, then Close Combat and Stamina. 

The aim when rolling, is to score Successes, a Success being a result of eight or more. Rolls of ten are added to the total and a player can roll them again. A player only needs to roll one Success for a character to complete task, but will want to roll more. Not only because Successes can be used to buy off Complications—ranging between one and five—but also because they can be used to buy Stunts which will impose Complications for others, create an Enhancement for another action, or one that it makes it difficult to act against a character. Some Stunts cost nothing, so ‘Inflict Damage’ costs nothing, though may cost more if the enemy is wearing soft armour, a ‘Critical Hit’ costs four Stunts, and so on. Instead of adding to the number of dice rolled, equipment used adds Enhancements or further Successes for a player to expend, but the player needs to roll at least one Success for equipment to be effective.

Under the Storypath system, and thus in Dystopia Rising, failure is never complete. Rather, if a player does not roll any Successes, then he receives a Consolation. This can be a ‘Twist of Fate’, which reveals an alternative approach or new information; a ‘Chance Meeting’ introduces a new helpful NPC; or an ‘’Unlooked-for Advantage’, an Enhancement which can be used in a future challenge. Alternatively, a character gains Momentum which can be expended to gain an Enhancement or to activate a Skill Trick or an Edge.

The rules in Trouble on the Steel Pier: A Dystopia Rising: Evolution Jumpstart cover narrative and dramatic scale, combat—players roll an appropriate Resilience Attribute to generate Successes to be expended on Defensive Stunts, and procedurals such as information gathering, intrigue, influence, and so on. These are all clearly explained and all easy to use in play. In general, the Storypath system, as presented in this Jumpstart is clearly presented and quick to pick up. They feel simpler and faster than the Storyteller system and have a cinematic quality to them, especially with the availability of Stunts and Consolations in the face of failure.

Characters in the Storypath system share much in common with the Storyteller system. They have nine Attributes—Intellect, Cunning, Resolving, Might, Dexterity, Stamina, Presence, Manipulation, and Composure; a range a skills, some with associated Skill Tricks and Specialities; and Edges, Paths, and Aspirations. A Skill Speciality, such as ‘I Can Eat That’ for the Survival skill, adds an Enhancement, whilst a Skill Trick, like ‘Wayfinder’ or ‘Charisma’, require a point of Momentum. Of all of the aspects in Trouble on the Steel Pier: A Dystopia Rising: Evolution Jumpstart, what each Skill Trick actually is the least explained, so a playing group will just have to improvise. Edges are the equivalent of advantages, and for certain characters can be Faith or Psi Edges, whilst a character has three Paths. His Strain Path represents his history and strain of humanity, as well as his Strain condition; his Role Path is his occupation or what he is good at; and his Society Path represents his connection to a group or society. For example, one of the pre-generated characters is has the Strain Path of Retrograde, which means he has rotting skin due to excess radiation and consequently, the Strain Condition of ‘It’s Zed!’, meaning his appearance makes it difficult for others to communicate with him; the Role Path of Gunslinger, good with firearms; and the Society Path of Settlement (Philly del Phia). Aspirations are a character’s goals, and in the scenario are either short or long term.

The five characters included in Trouble on the Steel Pier: A Dystopia Rising: Evolution Jumpstart are a firebrand leader and sniper, a bruiser and paragon of faith, a cannibal tunnel rat and knife fighter, a charismatic scoundrel, and a physically disabled tech wizard and driver. Each is presented in full colour over two pages with the character sheet on one and an illustration and background on the other. The character sheets are easy to read and the background easy to pick up.

The scenario, ‘Trouble on the Steel Pier’, is a Macguffin hunt. The characters in the Big A.C., a glitzy harbour settlement , when they are asked by a contact from a Pure Blood family in Philly del Phia to collect a parcel of medical supplies from an incoming boat, the Harbinger. Unfortunately, as the boat sails into view, it comes under attack by zombies. The characters will have to get out to the Harbinger and save both her and the crew and find the medical supplies. Of course, not all is as it seems, but discovering that will require co-operation and investigation upon the part of the player characters. Each of the five scenes is very clearly organised with explanations of how the characters got there, what they need to accomplish, the opposition they face, and the goal of the scene all laid out for the Storyguide—as the Game Master is known in Dystopia Rising: Evolution. Everything that the Storyguide needs is laid out within each scene, making them easy to run. The scenes are a mix of action, investigation, roleplaying, and subterfuge. The story is linear, but that is not really an issue in a Jumpstart which is intended to introduce both setting and mechanics of Dystopia Rising: Evolution. If there is an issue with ‘Trouble on the Steel Pier’, it is perhaps that the scenario is a bit short and does not end on an exciting note. Nevertheless, there is plenty for the players and their characters to do, the characters themselves being nicely done to encourage roleplaying and show off what they can do.

Physically, Trouble on the Steel Pier: A Dystopia Rising: Evolution Jumpstart is a slim softback, done in full colour with plenty of illustrations depicting the grungy, worn world of a post-apocalyptic future. It could have done with an edit in places and perhaps a better explanation of some of the elements of the characters.

The good thing is that as much as Trouble on the Steel Pier: A Dystopia Rising: Evolution Jumpstart is a standalone, there is nothing to stop the Storyguide running its scenario with the full rules and characters of the players’ own creation. Its setting has a grim and grimy atmosphere, but does not over do either, nor does it overdo its zombies, so this is more than just a zombie roleplaying game. Overall, Trouble on the Steel Pier: A Dystopia Rising: Evolution Jumpstart is a good introduction to the Dystopia Rising: Evolution setting, a Post Apocalypse future still beset by zombies, its stripped down, slimmer mechanics of the Storypath system support its cinematic feel with its Stunts which give the players and their characters more options in play.