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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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Gen Con 2013 Post-Convention Recap – Part 1

Gen Con 2013 Post-Convention Recap – Part 1

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As always, the best four days of gaming did not fail to impress. The number of cool new (or just new to me) games was astounding, so I’ll do a quick run-down of them here and then go into a bit more depth in individual and group reviews over the next couple of weeks. I’m going through these games mostly sequentially of how I experienced them, rather than in any specific order of preference.

Day 1

legacy-gears-of-time-38One of the first games I came across upon entering the Exhibitor’s Hall was Legacy: Gears of Time (Amazon). This game’s from a relatively new company, Floodgate Games, and was funded through a Kickstarter. I first heard of it a few months back, when they Kickstarted the Legacy: Forbidden Machines expansion. Unfortunately, this was right after a little heart-to-heart with my wife about my Kickstarter “issue” … so I had pledged to pretty much stop backing any Kickstarter projects.

Legacy: Gears of Time is a time-travel themed technology-building card game. Basically, you move back in time along a track and establish technologies. Some technologies are “Fundamental,” but others require certain technologies to be established earlier in the timeline for them to work. You can establish a Combustion Engine without Fire or The Wheel in play, but the Combustion Engine won’t actually be successful until those earlier technologies are established. When you establish working technologies, you gain Influence tokens. In order to keep technologies working, you not only have to establish the technologies, but keep them active by using your Influence on them, so that the technology (or its prerequisites) don’t fade out of existence. This Influence mechanic also allows you to basically seize control of a technology established by someone else and get points for controlling that technology.

It’s a fun game. My one immediate issue is that the artwork isn’t the most polished. It has that “Good, but …” artistic feel that I’ve found on several of the Kickstarter board games that I’ve seen. However, the mechanics are rock solid and I’ll be doing a more in-depth review of the game and expansion in the future, since I now own a copy!

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The Exploding World of Castles and Crusades

The Exploding World of Castles and Crusades

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Codex CeltarumI was disappointed I wasn’t able to go to GenCon this week. Although I’ve been enjoying Howard Andrew Jones’s sporadic updates on Facebook, and looking forward to a detailed report when he gets back.

In the meantime, I’ve been consoling myself with memories of my last game convention, Gary Con V in March. I wrote up a detailed report on Gary Con IV last year, but just didn’t have time to do it justice with a full length write-up this year. But I sure enjoyed the few hours I was able to spend there. The highlight for me, as usual, was the Dealer’s Room, which gets bigger and more varied every year.

I was pleased to be able to say hello to Kelsey “Rose” Jones at the Games By Gamers booth, makers of the world’s best dice bags, and tell her how much I enjoyed her work. And buy a new bag for my daughter, who complained that the ones I brought home last year were “covered in skulls and icky stuff, and not pretty. At all.” She was right, and this time I got her a nice bag with a fall color print, which made her extremely happy.

I was also very pleased to finally meet Jeffrey Talanian and Ian Baggley — the writer and artist behind the terrific Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea, which I reviewed last December — and buy a copy of the hot-of-the-press first issue of Gygax Magazine. I also met the friendly folks at Faster Monkey Games, and bought a copy of Castle Ravenloft from the Noble Knight Games booth, which was stocked with a wonderful assortment of new and collectible games in great condition — and at great prices.

But my most impressive stop was at Stephen Chenault’s Troll Lord booth, where I was astounded at the wide range of new Castles & Crusades titles. I had a nice talk with Stephen and left feeling very jazzed about the exciting things in store for Old School Renaissance fans.

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Step Into the Traveller Universe with Fate of the Kinunir

Step Into the Traveller Universe with Fate of the Kinunir

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Fate of the KinunirbyIf, like me, you have fond memories of mustering out after a few tours of duty and becoming a ship captain plying the Spinward Marches, guided only by a trio of slim black volumes with the Traveller logo, then you’ll be very pleased to hear that there’s a line of promising tie-in novels headed your way.

The first one, Robert E. Vardeman’s Fate of the Kinunir, was published in multiple e-book formats on August 1. Vardeman is the author of the Cenotaph Road series, as well as the Swords of Raemllyn books and the Demon Crown Trilogy, among many others.

The books are being packaged by Athans & Associates Creative Consulting, under license from Marc Miller’s Far Future Enterprises, who have overseen the Traveller product line for the last decade or so — including the superb First Edition reprints, and the entire 5th Edition line.

Personally, I’m very pleased to see some fiction set in the Traveller universe. I was never a very serious Traveller player; but for that brief period I did play, I had a great deal of fun running my little merchant ship between outlying systems, selling whatever I could find to trade. Traveller was the only role playing game I knew that had a complete little economic mini-game buried in its trading charts, and for years after we played, I still daydreamed about being a merchant in the stars.

According to Athans & Associates, Fate of the Kinunir will be followed by a new book every month for the next year, including novels by Tim Waggoner, Erik Scott de Bie, Martin J. Dougherty, Darrin Drader, and others. The fiction line will be managed by Philip Athans, the founding partner of Athans & Associates, who was the senior managing editor at Wizards of the Coast, overseeing the novel lines for the Dungeons & Dragons settings Forgotten Realms, Dragonlance, and many others.

Fate of the Kinunir was published by Far Future Enterprises on August 1st. It is 212 pages, priced at $5.99 for the Kindle edition.

[Thanks to John DeNardo at SF Signal for the tip].

Vintage Treasures: Adventure on the Final Frontier with Star Explorer

Vintage Treasures: Adventure on the Final Frontier with Star Explorer

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Star Explorer FGU-smallHow do you create a Star Trek game without a Star Trek license?

Turns out it’s not actually that hard — at least not if you follow the example of Star Explorer, the science fiction game of “Adventure on the Final Frontier” published in 1982 by Fantasy Games Unlimited.

Star Explorer was released three years after Star Fleet Battles, Steven V. Cole’s groundbreaking wargame from Task Force Games in 1979, and the same year as the first true Star Trek RPG, Star Trek: The Role Playing Game, published by FASA. Both competing titles were hits, with multiple editions over the next few decades.

In contrast, Star Explorer vanished pretty quickly, with virtually no supporting material at all. Which is a shame, because it had a lot of potential.

Star Explorer is an adventure game of exploration and encounter in deep space. It places you in the role of a starship captain who must command her ship on a variety of dangerous missions. Success depends on your ability to select the right crew for away missions and to tweak your ship design as required.

While it had some role playing aspects, it was really a board game, with a board and everything. Not a board that displayed tantalizing planets and star systems for you to explore, sadly. No, just a green, featureless tactical map used to resolve star combat. But you did get 240 colorful counters you could push around the map and imagine were exploring stuff.

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