Fun OSR Things for your Week!

It is a good week for things OSR!

Tenkar’s Tavern is hosting a Best Character Death Contest in honor of the new SlaughterGrid module by Rafael Chandler.  Edit: The contest is over and there are tons of interesting character deaths to read about (including one of mine) and you can get Rafael’s Teratic Tome for only $2.62 for a limited time!

DriveThruRPG has gather together ten great examples of the OSR gaming here, including Castles & Crusaders, Hackmaster and Dungeon Crawl Classics, and with this code you can get 15% off any or all of them: OSRF711F2 (until Sunday, 19 May).

Have fun and game more!

Kickstarters I am backing: Toolcards and Short Order Heroes

These two Kickstarters are both card-based tools for roleplayers:

Toolcards, Fantasy GM Cards, are a project by my friend jim pinto at Postworld Games.  jim who did the Toolbox books for AEG so he knows what works for this sort of thing.  The cards are full of inspiration and ideas for any GM and as the stretch goals are reached, new subsets are being opened up (Wards and Dooms so far).  If you like this sort of random tool for your game inspiration, this is for you.

Short Order Heroes, which is both a light game in and of itself and a card deck for generating characters. by Calico Games, it is already up to 96-card decks with additional expansions unlocked by further stretch goals.  Panda Gaming Grove has a nice short review of Short Order Heroes (and is even willing to give you a chance to win his preview copy to people who spread word of the Short Order Heroes).

So, please investigate and see if they would be useful to you.  If so, please support them.

April 2013 A to Z Challenge – What should I do?

The Other Side Blog has reminded me that we are coming up on April and the A to Z blogging Challenge, which I have signed up for.

The question is, what to write about this time?

In 2011, I did magic items, mostly themed around the Greek and Roman Gods.

In 2012, the theme I followed was fantastic places, mostly from the Sea of Stars but from other places as well.

But what to do for 2013?  Would people like to see more magic items?  More fantastic places?  Spells and curses?  Characters?  I want your suggestions and ideas!

Update!  Suggestions and votes (including from G+) so far:

• Magic Items, 2 votes
• Spells, 1 vote
• Low-level city NPCs (no name, use A to Z for their title), 1 vote
• Exotic Familiars, 1 vote
• Diseases, 1 vote
• Traps, 2 votes
• Mystical or esoteric texts, 1 vote.

More Cyberpunk Inspiration

Military and militant corporations are a staple of cyberpunk futures (and actually exist, look at Academi formerly known as Blackwater).  But they do not have to be the bad guy, they might just be useful employers and allies.  Maybe you are having problems with pirates?  Then you could hire a private navy like the Typhon company to provide one!  It seems like there could be some good adventure in working for (or against) a company like Typhon.

Extrapolating from current trends, you should be worried about the ever present surveillance state and very worried about closed circuit camera (CCTV), facial recognition software and drones?  (And if you are not, you probably should be.)  What about a privacy visor to counter facial recognition software?    Or perhaps some anti-drone fashion to make life more difficult for those spies in the skies (more on stealth wear here)?

Need a clever way to store data?  How about on strands of DNA?  How much information could be hidden in a cat?

I will also link to my Cyberpunk board on Pinterest again, it is slowly growing as new pieces are found.

Cyberpunk Inpirational Material

N1ON has done a short film called True Skin which gives a great image of a possible cyberpunk future, the CGI is quite good and the story is almost a perfect player character background or plot hook.

Foreshadows: the Ghosts of Zero anthology and soundtrack, reviewed here, contains a great collection and stories and music to inspire a variety of campaign styles.

Will Cities Of The Future Be Filled With Vertical Slums? A discussion of the repurposing of abandoned skyscrapers using what happened to the Torre David office tower in Caracas, Venezuela as an example.

And, lastly, my small, but growing, collection of cyberpunk pieces at Pinterest.

Ada Lovelace Day 2012

Ada Lovelace

Ada Lovelace Day is an international day of blogging to raise awareness of the achievements and successes of women in technology and science.  This year it is today (16th October).

As is my want, I will be looking back at one of the early female scientists, Aglaonike of Thessaly who lived in the 2nd Century BCE naturally, we only have fragmentary information about her (which is true of all such people of that era).  Aglaonike was the first female astrologer in Ancient Greece and was able to predict Lunar eclipses, a Greek proverb makes reference to Aglaonike’s alleged boasting: “Yes, as the moon obeys Aglaonike” which indicate her confidence in her abilities.  Other female astrologers were inspired by Aglaonike becoming known as the “witches of Thessaly” and often regarded as sorcerers.  (You can learn a little more about her at Wikipedia.)

And, lastly, one would be remiss to not mention 2D Goggles where, in the universe next door, Ada Lovelace is a adventerous science heroine.

Notes: Picture from the Wikimedia Commons and is in the public domain.

Useful Resource for Pulp SF/F and more

UNZ.org gathers the rights to out of print magazine and books, collects orphaned videos and more and makes them all available online for researchers and the curious.  (They also have offered awards for researchers who use their archive in new and interesting ways.)

Check out the list of SF/F/Horror titles here (including 44 issues of Weird Tales), they also have Mysteries and much, much more in their periodical collection.

Take a look around and tell me if you find any gems.

Alex Mitchell’s Inspirational Artwork

From a link on G+, I was propelled into the galleries of Alex Mitchell (aka genesischant on deviantART artist and animator (writer and artist for Space Ninja).  Mitchell does a lot of redesigning characters for other genres, such as a chambara Justice League (of which the Steel Man/Superman is pictured to the right).

He has also done 1930s versions of the JLA as vigilante gang busters, while the Secret Society (of supervillains) are all mob bosses.  The X-Men as Victorian-era spiritualist/occult based heroes and much much more.

So much inspiration here for superhero games, Legend of the Five Rings, steampunk, Victorian-era games and more.  Go take a look and see what takes your fancy.

Oh, and he even has a piece inspired from back when he played D&D.

Twenty Quick Questions (from Jeff Rients) and Answers about the Sea of Stars

A while back Jeff Rients posed these questions as a spur for thinking about your campaign world.  Decided that they might be fun to answer.

1. What is the deal with my cleric’s religion?  Just because most of the gods are dead does not mean that faith is gone.  There are those that follow the guiding hand of the natural world, other that commune with their ancestors, some that seem to embody abstract principles and even a few that worship the dragons directly (but that is officially discouraged).   If you must follow a patron, you can worship the Sun, lord of light and healing, or (if you are willing to risk a horrible death) the Moon, maiden of chaos and mischief.  Or, you could adopt the Way.

The Gods of Porphyra

From Purple Duck Game’s announcement for The Gods of Porphrya

“In April of this year, I launched a search for writers to contribute to an open Pantheon. This tome is the result of the hard work of over a dozen writers who stepped up to help us create a twenty-seven god pantheon that can be used as open game content in our products and the products of any other publisher that wishes to use them without restriction.

This tome features: