White Star Emerging From Hyperspace May Fourth!

Yeah, this was what I first thought of when I heard the title, too.

As I briefly touched upon in my last post, James Spahn of Barrel Rider Games has been cooking up White Star, a new OSR sci-fi game using the Swords & Wizardry: White Box engine. Just yesterday, James announced that the .PDF will be released on RPGNow/DriveThru on May the Fourth.

Hmmmmm... I wonder if there is some significance to that date?

White Star promises to feature new classes. robots and aliens, science fiction hardware, starships, cybernetics, and much, much more. The game is also supposed to be completely compatible with S&W:WB so you can easily play high fantasy/science fiction mash-ups like Expedition to the Barrier Peaks, Dragonstar, or Amethyst. The PDF will retail for $9.99 with a PoD digest (6" x 9") edition in both softcover ($14.99) and hardcover ($24.99) coming out as soon as James okays the proofs. Preliminary reviews appear very positive. James has also wisely started a Google+ Community to give players a place to discuss the game as soon as it drops.

You will be able to read my review here as soon as I get my hands on a copy!

My Muse Wears Combat Boots!

SCENE: Mark's Room. Mark is lying on the bed, semi-conscious. An old MST3K episode is playing on the TV. He's surrounded by empty soda cans and crumpled microwave popcorn bags. Suddenly the door breaks open and Mark's Muse comes storming into the room.

Mark's Muse: Okay you fat, ugly load! Up and at 'em.

Mark: (Groans and mumbles groggily.)

Muse: None of that, wuss. It's been two months since you posted a damn thing on your crappy little blog. Time to get your ass on that computer and post something! Now ooze your tonnage out of that bed and get to work!

Mark: Go away. I've not up for it. I'm feeling depressed. Work has been a real drain. I've got writer's block.

Muse: Oh, writer's block my eye! Look, you totally neglected to post anything about your trip to Gary Con, you let Swords & Wizardry Appreciation Day slip by you, you've posted nothing on James Spahn's upcoming SW: Whitebox-based science fiction game, and the "Year of Tekumel" is a quarter over and you've only posted about that lame-ass GM screen!

Mark: Yeah, yeah, it's not as if anyone really cares about this damn blog. I only have around 80 subscribers while all the other cool OSR bloggers have hundreds of followers, some with lucrative Paetron accounts to justify the time and effort they put into their work.

Muse: Oh boo hoo! Nobody reads my blog and I'm a pauper with a lousy day-job! Save the crippling self-doubt for your therapist, worm! Now write!

Mark: Fine! (Gets up to open up his laptop.) This will teach me to get my muses second hand from fantasy porn-comic sites.

Muse: More writing, less snark lard-bottom or I'll use your meager excuse for genitals as a whimsical pencil topper!

Crypts & Things Remastered, Conan, and things Sword & Sorcery

You can hear the heavy metal guitar solos
coming from this cover, can't you?

A few years back, Newt Newton at D101 Games published a sweet Swords & Wizardry variant titled Crypts & Things. This OSR-flavored game has everything who like their fantasy dark and gritty with some pretty cool rules additions inspired by Akrasia of Akratic Wizardry fame. Now Newt is about to launch a Kickstarter campaign for a "remastered"edition of C&T.

This upcoming edition promises new and improved artwork, tighter editing, new and streamlined rules, more classes, more spells, more monsters, more EVERYTHING! Donors will also get a sneak peek of the draft rules, so they can get a taste for what is to come.

Makes you want to strip down to your breechcloth and run around with a huge sword slaying serpent men, doesn't it?

(Except myself, of course, Me in any state of undress is a horror of Lovecraftian proportions!)

Since I'm one of those types who needs miniatures for my games, I've been thinking about great sources for appropriate Sword & Sorcery figures. I've mainly been getting mine from Reaper, but Newt's initial announcement turned by attention toward this recently funded Kickstarter campaign by from Monolith Board Games featuring a familiar fantasy hero:

"CROM! What manner of foul sorcery has put me in a box!" 

"Conan is a miniature-based board game that pits one player, the overlord, who controls hordes of savage tribesmen, no-good lowlifes and undead minions against 1 to 4 players who incarnate the legendary Conan and his fellow adventurers. The gameplay is asymetric, as the overlord possesses a large selection of models and objectives which are his own, whereas the brave heroes are played from a first person perspective, much like in a role playing game. An adventure can be played out in 1 hour on one of the beautiful game boards as you pit your wits, daring and tactical acumen against your opponent."

The miniature samples look nothing less than awesome and the "King Pledge" level gives you a heap of familiar heroes, human, enemies, monsters, and terrain. I normally don't buy into board games, but like the Reaper Bones, Heavy Gear, and Robotech: Tactics crowdfunding campaigns that came before, I could not resit the wealth of figures that I would be getting for the price. Even if it turns out that the game itself is a bust, I will certainly use the miniatures for other things.

The Crypts & Things Remastered Kickstarter starts March 1.

Miniatures Jackpot!

The UPS man arrived yesterday, and what did he have for me? Why, the fruits of the the Reaper Bones II Kickstarter, that's what! Over 150 bendy plastic generic fantasy figures (with a few Deadlands and Numenera figs thrown in for good measure) to be painted, used, and abused in role-playing campaigns to come. Look! I say, LOOK upon this glories bounty!

I got in of the first Bones Kickstarter and I haven't even finished half the figs I got from that campaign, so I don't know when I've ever going to start in on these babies. I admit, I do get frustrated at times with the "bendy" nature of these figures, and wish they were molded from a harder variety of plastic, but they're great if you need a lot of miniatures for a very low price.

I better start painting.

I guess I'm running a Gary Con event after all.

I know I said that I wasn't planning on GMing this year at any of the cons I was visiting, but there is a game that I've been wanting to play for some time and a convention maybe the only place I can find interested players. This year, I'm running an introductory game of The Void, a mixture of dark, claustrophobic hard science fiction and Lovecraftian horror from Wildfire. (Gamers may recognize this as a campaign setting for Traveller, Chthonian Stars.) Here's the description I submitted:

It's almost a bad horror vid cliche: Warden command receives a garbled distress call from some rusted-out freighter sliding down the gravity well from the Kuiper Belt and your ship just happens to be "the closest ship in the sector." Now you've just awoken from A/D sleep after a high-G course correction to intercept the wayward freighter. Your mission: board the ship, find any survivors, and determine if it's just a mechanical problem... or something else. 

"The Void" is the role-playing game where hard science fiction action meets Lovecraftian horror from Wildfire games. This is an introductory game, so all comers are welcome. Pregenerated PCs will be provided. Six-sided dice are required.

I intend to run the game twice: Thursday at 2 PM, and Friday at 4 PM. If this works out, I'll also run it at Gamer Hole Con, and maaaaaybe the Nexus Game Fair if I can get off for that weekend—though I doubt it.

So put your mag-boots on, make sure the O² tank on your EVA suit is charged up, and remember to save the last bullet for yourself.

Coming Soon: The Expanse

There hasn't been a good science fiction TV series since Captain Malcolm Reynolds and his band of merry malcontents flew off into the sun after 14 episodes, and before that, Babylon 5. The various regurgitations of the Trek Franchise got boring after a while, as did the 87 seasons of Stargate SG-1. I never liked any of the surreal "mind fuck" series like The X Files, Lost, Heroes, or Fringe. Ronald Moore's rehash of Battlestar Galactica (Or as it call it "Lost... In Space!" Get it?) left me cold after the first season as it tried to be more symbolic and navel-gazing than entertaining. It's not that I don't think that sci-fi shouldn't deal with "BIG" issues, it's just that Hollywood ends up pandering to the lowest common denominator and ends up running back to ideas and conclusions that are safe and comfortable for your average American mass-entertainment-consuming dullard. (e.g. Prometheus. What should have been nihilistic horror gets mired in optimistic religious bullshit and spiritualistic bollocks. Then again, what do you expect from Damon Lindelof?)

That said, it looks like SyFy, in its recent effort to finally put add some actual science fiction to its repertoire of ghost hunting shows ("WHAT WAS THAT! WHAT WAS THAT!") and professional wrestling, are producing The Expanse, a 10-episode micro-series based on James S.A. Corey's series of novels. If you haven't read the series, do so starting with Leviathan Wakes! It's one part Firefly (i.e. ragtag spaceship crew of misfits), one part Game of Thrones (i.e. political machinations and conspiracy), with soupcon of The Walking Dead and a pinch of H.P. Lovecraft (i.e. body horror and ancient alien "Things-That-Man-Was-Not-Meant-To-Know").

 Finally! A return to the TV space opera in all it's glory! Pew pew pew pew...

My 2015 Convention Schedule

A new year has come, and with it, a new year of conventions here. Since I worked all three of the winter holidays (not that I had much choice, mind you), I'm getting a couple of extra vacation days, so I plan to make the most of them! This year, I'm attending...

Gary Con (March 26-29): This has become the con I live for now. It's so close to home that I don't need to rent a hotel room and it's a far more intimate and friendly affair than the larger, more-visible conventions. This year it almost looked like I wasn't going to make it at all. My employer is rather strict and stingy when it comes to approving vacation requests and someone had already requested off for that Thursday and Sunday! However, thanks to a sympathetic co-work willing to trade workdays, I'll be able to make Thursday's festivities. I'm still trying to see if I can get Sunday off, but I won't get my hopes up.

This year, I'm just going to play. I have no time to put together a scenario to GM and I want to flesh out Mu a little more before I try to run it again. After playing in Tim Kask's OD&D games, I'm going to shoot for getting into one of Frank Mentzer's games.

Gamehole Con (November 6-8): Another "local" convention, I've heard enough good things to persuade me to attend for the first time. It has a larger scope than Gary Con, catering to a larger selection of games than just classic role-playing. That suits me fine, of course.

I've got the vacation time cleared with my corporate slave drivers, now all I need to do is scrimp and save for a cheap room. Madison is little further from my place than Lake Geneva, but its still a tolerable distance for a poor gamer like myself. Also the lateness in the year, gives me most of the year to work on some ideas and think up something to run.

See you all there!