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GenCon 2013 Post-Convention Recap – Part 3: The Pathfinder Booth

GenCon 2013 Post-Convention Recap – Part 3: The Pathfinder Booth

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One of the most fun booths at GenCon (a land of many fun booths) is the Paizo booth. They have their own table with nearly round-the-clock author signings and great promotional giveaways, plus they produce fantastic gaming products … this year, having topped previous years in all categories. Their goblin masks were ubiquitous throughout the convention hall, though I did miss the Goblin flash mob on Wednesday evening. But I did have an opportunity to spend time at the booth and talk with CCO Erik Mona about the new developments with their line of games.

Pathfinder Adventure Card Game

PathfinderRotRLDefinitely the biggest hit at the Paizo booth was the release of the first boxed set in the Pathfinder Adventure Card Game (Amazon, Paizo), a massive box containing nearly 500 cards. The demo area where they were running through the game was packed and I never actually made it into a demo slot, though I did watch a few of them.  When I arrived on Thursday morning, there was a line nearly halfway down the wall of the Exhibit Hall, consisting mostly of people who were buying this game.

This isn’t a simple card game, but instead a roleplaying campaign in a box. It can be played by 1 to 4 players – that’s right, it can be played solo – who create a character, and then build a deck of equipment, allies, and magic to help progress through the events of Paizo’s classic Rise of the Runelords adventure path.

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Andre Norton, Michael Moorcock and Appendix N: Advanced Readings in D&D

Andre Norton, Michael Moorcock and Appendix N: Advanced Readings in D&D

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stormbringerAnd so we come to two of the most influential and prolific fantasy writers of the 20th Century, Andre Norton and Michael Moorcock, as we follow intrepid literary explorers Mordicai and Tim Callahan on their voyage of discovery through Appendix N at Tor.com.

Tim and Mordicai have been none too gentle to some of the writers in Appendix N, including L. Sprague de Camp, Gardner Fox, and even Roger Zelazny. But in Norton and Moorcock, they find authors they can appreciate.

Here’s Tim on Michael Moorcock:

I read The Swords Trilogy and The Chronicles of Corum early, and they made an impact. They exploded inside my mind in a way I have never forgotten, even if I can’t remember many of the story details from any particular chapter… but I didn’t really feel like I tuned into Elric until halfway through the first reprint volume, when we get the four novellas of Stormbringer…

It’s classic Moorcock, in that imaginative and terrifyingly evocative way that I loved all those years ago when I first picked up The Swords Trilogy off a spinner rack in my hometown general store. Stormbringer begins with agents of chaos abducting Elric’s wife, and it takes off into the realm of mass warfare and conflicts with not-quite-dead-gods soon enough.

Moorcock aims for the mythic.

Read the complete article here.

Good to see a little love for classic sword & sorcery, but personally I don’t see a lot of direct influence from Elric on D&D — unless you count the section on powerful artifacts in the Dungeon Masters Guide, which clearly was conceived with weapons like Stormbringer in mind.

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An Introduction to King of Chaos

An Introduction to King of Chaos

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Pathfinder Tales King of Chaos-smallWhen I began writing Queen of Thorns, my favorite secondary characters were the bleachling gnome Fimbulthicket and the elven Calistrian inquisitor Kemeili. Before long, however, the elven paladin Oparal grew closest to my heart.

That proved problematic because I was revealing her character through the eyes of my flawed protagonists, Radovan and Varian, each of whom has his own tilted worldview when it comes to elves, paladins, women, or all three. Thus, by the end of the novel I feared Oparal had earned less sympathy from the readers, who had seen her only from the outside, than she had from me, who knew the secrets of her heart.

Thus, as I was finishing revisions on the novel and editor James Sutter and I discussed where the boys might travel next, I added a scene showing that Oparal would leave Kyonin to join the Silver Crusade against the demons of the Worldwound, knowing full well the boys would soon join her. It was time, I decided, to tell part of the story from her point of view.

Elsewhere, you can read about how hard it was to find Varian’s voice after establishing Radovan’s first, in the novella “Hell’s Pawns.” It was slightly less difficult to come up with the “voice” of Arnisant the Ustalavic wolf hound in “Master of Devils.” Finding Oparal’s voice took me several tries, and I probably rewrote this first chapter four or five times before feeling I’d found it and having the courage to move on to the rest of her chapters.

I hope you will find it a voice equal to those of “the boys,” and by the end of the novel, I like to think we’ve seen Oparal from the inside as well as from the outside.

Read the first chapter of King of Chaos right here at Black Gate, and try an exclusive excerpt of Queen of Thorns here.

To order the novels, visit paizo.com.

Vintage Treasures: The Lords of Underearth

Vintage Treasures: The Lords of Underearth

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Lords of Underearth-smallI’ve written before about the marvelously compact games from Metagaming that first introduced me to role playing, both in my editorial in Black Gate 12 and here on the blog.

It was the ubiquitous Metagaming ads on the inside cover of Analog and Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine in the late 70s that first caught my eye. I carefully clipped out the order form (I bet you kids have never clipped an order form out of a magazine in your life. Bah! You don’t know what you’re missing. A gaping hole in the cover of your magazine, that’s what you’re missing) and mailed off my $2.95 for copy of Melee and $3.95 for the fabulously deluxe Wizard.

Both games were written by Steve Jackson — yes, the same genius designer behind Ogre, GURPS, Car Wars, Munchkin, and numerous others. For my money (all $6.90), those two early games still rank as perhaps his finest creations.

Steve Jackson left Metagaming in the 1980 to found Steve Jackson Games and his loss was keenly felt. But the rights to Melee and Wizard remained with Metagaming and its owner, Howard M. Thompson. Thompson supported the system with a series of excellent releases, including some of the best solitaire products this industry has ever seen, including Death Test, Death Test 2, Orb Quest, and Grail Quest.

I’ve been playing Grail Quest since 1980 — the last few years with my son Drew at my side — fruitlessly searching the treacherous woods and castles outside Camelot for the Holy Grail. It’s got to be in that damn game somewhere. I’m going to find it some day, I swear.

Anyway, Metagaming produced a total of 22 microgames before the company folded in 1983. Virtually all of them were science fiction and fantasy in theme, and they exhibited an imaginative range of settings and themes, from Rivets — the game of two dueling robot colonies — to Sticks & Stones, the first (and only) stone age RPG. I’ve gradually collected all of them over the years, and it was with some satisfaction that I finally completed my collection this year with the one that was the most difficult to track down: the fantasy game of subterranean warfare in an ancient Dwarven Stronghold, The Lords of Underearth.

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Vintage Bits: Lordlings of Yore

Vintage Bits: Lordlings of Yore

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Lordlings of Yore-smallThere’s a lot of interest in retro-gaming today. Seriously, it’s a thing. There are fewer sales of big-budget shooters and a lot more people hunkered over tablets and cell phones, playing games that look like they were first compiled in 1995. I’ve seen my sons jump over more platforms and spill more monster guts in low resolution on their iPad recently than on their Xbox 360, let me tell you.

I appreciate the nod to the early days of the genre, but that ain’t true retro gaming. True retro games aren’t downloaded from the Internet. True retro games don’t even come in a box.

You really want retro gaming? You need to pull open a zip-lock bag, my friend. Respect.

I own a lot of computer games. A lot of them are old. Hell, most of them are old. The bulk of my collection comes from 1989 – 2003, when I still had time to occasionally insert a disk into my desktop machine and play Icewind Dale or Mechcommander a few hours a week.

Amiga games? I got ’em. Commodore 64? Couple hundred, easy. But we’re still talking the era of boxes here. You want real retro gaming, you need to go back even before my time, to when the first computer games were sold in zip-lock bags in small hobby shops, and almost exclusively for the Apple II.

I’ve collected a few of those fascinating relics over the years, but only a very few. I have Cranston Manor, Hi-Res Adventure #3, from an outfit called Sierra On-Line, Inc (1981). I have Odyssey: The Compleat Apventure, from Synergistic Software, from 1980 (purchased on eBay nearly 10 years ago for a ridiculous sum). But the rarest game — and certainly one of the most interesting — I possess is probably Lordlings of Yore, a marvelous fantasy strategy game I found on a used game shelf in a computer store in Champaign, Illinois in 1993.

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New Treasures: Monster Island by Pete Nash & Friends

New Treasures: Monster Island by Pete Nash & Friends

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Monster Island Runequest-smallI’ve been on a bit of a RuneQuest kick recently, inspired by my purchase of the incredible Pavis: Gateway to Adventure setting from Moon Design.

I honestly didn’t expect to encounter anything comparable to Pavis any time soon. But I didn’t reckon with The Design Mechanism and their equally ambitious campaign setting Monster Island — a massive and mysterious island which invites gamers to “delve back to a time of classic Sword & Sorcery with priceless jewels, fierce dinosaurs, and dark horror!”

Monster Island is precisely the kind of fully realized and adventure-packed product I wish I’d had when I first tried RuneQuest years ago. It’s a marvelously imaginative sandbox setting, complete with strange monsters, dangerous ruins, giant (and I do mean giant!) beasts, and even greater surprises. Why hasn’t anyone thought of this before?

Author Pete Nash dedicated the book to two people, both of whom we lost this year: legendary Chaosium editor Lynn Willis, “who was my mentor and gave me my start in gaming,” and filmmaker Ray Harryhausen, “whose monsters have never been surpassed. Both of you spurred my imagination and haunted my dreams…. this book is a fruition of your influences.”

Imagining a fusion of the brilliance of Chaosium’s best adventure modules — including Cthulhu By Gaslight, the award-winning Masks of Nyarlathotep, Thieves’ World, and Shadows of Yog-Sothoth — and the unfettered imagination of Ray Harryhausen is as good a way as any to describe Monster Island, a true adventurer’s paradise packed with mystery, danger, and constant surprises.

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Vintage Treasures: Jolly R. Blackburn’s Shadis #15

Vintage Treasures: Jolly R. Blackburn’s Shadis #15

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Shadis 15-smallA few weeks ago, I stumbled on an eBay seller unloading a nice collection of vintage gaming merchandise. Quite a bit of it sold at high prices too, especially TSR’s Dragon Dice sets and several classic D&D modules in mint condition.

What wasn’t selling? The seller had haphazardly bundled some old gaming publications, in lots labeled “Magazine/Fanzine.” They included a pretty wide range of titles of various quality, including Game Trade Magazine, Games Quarterly, Game News, Gameplay, Games, Shred, The V.I.P. of Gaming Magazine, Sorcerer’s Apprentice, Games Unplugged, Dungeon, White Dwarf, Arcane, and Shadis. All the lots were priced at a dollar.

There wasn’t much interest in them, to be honest. In some cases, it wasn’t really a surprise. The lots were oddly bundled — one contained eleven magazines, including four copies of Games Quarterly #7 and six copies of Game Trade Magazine #125.

I couldn’t figure out why the seller didn’t split those up into different lots. Who on Earth would want six copies of GTM #125?

I won most of the lots for between one to two bucks each, answering my own question. I now own six copies of GTM #125 — and 52 other vintage gaming magazines published between 1982 and 2012.

There’s a lot of great reading and gaming history in there. I was especially pleased to see Sorcerer’s Apprentice, White Dwarf, and Arcane, all of which are highly collectible today.

But the real delight, of course, was the single issue of Jolly R. Blackburn’s marvelous Shadis: issue #15, cover-dated Sept/Oct 1994, one of the most famous issues of the magazine ever published — and indeed, one of the highest selling single issues of any gaming magazine of the 90s.

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Goth Chick News: Surviving the Dying Light

Goth Chick News: Surviving the Dying Light

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image002I absolutely love shooting dead things.

Nothing takes the edge off a stressful day like arming up to the teeth on my PS3 and blasting the snot out of rampaging zombies or other marauding creatures of darkness.

Not that I have anything against creatures of darkness – no siree. I mean, at this point, some three years into writing Goth Chick News, the reanimated dead are not only some of my most prolific subjects, but often constitute the bulk of my party guests.

It’s just that “real” violence, or in this case realistic violence (i.e. Saints Row and Hitman), makes me queasy in a way that offing the undead does not. So I was as giddy as Rick Grimes at a Home Depot axe sale when I found out about Dying Light.

Dying Light is a first-person, action survival horror game set in a vast and dangerous open world. During the day, players traverse an expansive urban environment overrun by a vicious outbreak, scavenging the world for supplies and crafting weapons to defend against the growing infected population. At night, the hunter becomes the hunted, as the infected become aggressive and more dangerous. Most frightening are the predators which only appear after sundown. Players must use everything in their power to survive until the morning’s first light.

Developed by Techland for Warner Brothers Entertainment (the geniuses who brought you Dead Island), Dying Light will be available in PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Xbox 360 and PC formats, which is part of what I love about these guys. Development of solid games for the PC is dwindling, but until the PlayStation can fit with me in a coach airline seat, I appreciate anyone who creates this sort of fun for my lap top.

Now, join me in relishing the 12-minute gameplay walk through. It rocks utterly.

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Gen Con 2013 Post-Convention Recap – Part 2: D&D Party Time!

Gen Con 2013 Post-Convention Recap – Part 2: D&D Party Time!

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Drizzt Do'Urden, wielding his codpiece of holding, awaits the birthday festivities at Gen Con 2013
Drizzt Do’Urden, wielding his codpiece of holding, awaits the birthday festivities at Gen Con 2013

After a pretty full first day at Gen Con 2013, things were really just getting started for me.

At about 5:00 pm, I headed a couple of blocks over to the Indiana Repertory Theater for a Dungeons & Dragons press conference I’d been invited to. Following the press conference was to be the big Dungeons & Dragons party, which was celebrating not only the launch of The Sundering … but also the 25th anniversary of Drizzt Do’urden. (We even had cake!)

So, let’s lay it out here: Dungeons & Dragons is going through some massive shake-ups. Last year, I liveblogged from their keynote address, where the Powers-That-Be formally announced their intention to tie the D&D Next transformation of the rules in with a Forgotten Realms storyline called The Sundering.

This year, we got a lot more information about exactly what this will look like on the implementation. Plus … there was an open bar and a murder! But first, the gaming news.

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L. Sprague de Camp, Fletcher Pratt, Gardner Fox and Appendix N: Advanced Readings in D&D

L. Sprague de Camp, Fletcher Pratt, Gardner Fox and Appendix N: Advanced Readings in D&D

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The Compleat Enchanter-smallOver at Tor.com, the intrepid Mordicai Knode and Tim Callahan have been conducting dangerous psychoreality experiments, just like William Hurt in Altered States.

I don’t expect you to get that reference, because Altered States came out, like, a billion years ago. But trust me, it was wild. William Hurt locks himself in a sensory deprivation tank until he turns into some kind of glowing protoplasm. And Blair Brown got naked. A lot. Drew Barrymore played their 4-year old daughter, if that helps you understand how old this movie is.

Anyway, Mordicai and Tim have convinced the brain trust at Tor.com to let them attempt the same thing, in the name of science. Tor doesn’t have the budget for an awesome sensory deprivation tank (or to pay anyone to get naked), but they’ve got the essentials down. For the last month or so, Mordicai and Tim have been refusing all outside stimulus except the work of those authors listed in Appendix N of the Dungeon Masters Guide.

They’re consuming nothing but Mountain Dew and Doritos Locos Tacos from Taco Bell, and electrodes attached to their brains will capture the exact moment they transform into Dave Arneson and Gary Gygax. Hasn’t happened yet but, believe me, the stars are right and the time grows nigh.

In the meantime, teams of diligent scribes have been scribbling down every word Mordicai and Tim speak as they grow closer and closer to ultimate enlightenment. We’re here to share some of the best with you. Take them in small doses, this is potent stuff.

They start with L. Sprague de Camp, author of the early alternate history novel Lest Darkness Fall (1939), The Wheels of If (1948), Rogue Queen (1951), and, with Robert E. Howard, Tales of Conan (1955), one of the very first Conan collections.

Here’s Tim on L. Sprague de Camp, who left him underwhelmed.

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