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The post 1467 appeared first on Looking For Group.

 This session picked up over the weekend & starts right after this one here. While the rest of the party makes its way to Maple White Land via teleportation disks skipping between the Astral plane to Maple White Land. And the New York Barons (Victorian super hero league) handle the Martians. A very different conflict has taken part in the lower part of New York City's tenaments. The Begger King Needleshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11243274667834930867noreply@blogger.com0

The post Video of the Day – Doctor Who Confidential, 2007 appeared first on Blogtor Who.

Episode 164 – MMXXI

Marty, Dan, Chris and Adam ring in the New Year with tales of auction scores and rants of auction scores. We also talk some scuttlebutt that more comic book publishers are following DC Comics’ lead with a focus on trade paperbacks and monthly anthologies. What will this year yield as the changes of 2020 start to play out? And Supergirl is better than Venom … just sayin’!

If you are interested in older episodes please head to … http://heykidscomics.ca !

I've made some major revisions to Kung Fu Classics. Please take a look and let me know what you think!

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1vFi5wqLUXQA3qGXeYTKKgTRZNeeYOgMD?usp=sharing

 So after this past holiday's MiGo rush off the PC's failed to complete  Black Blade of the Demon King by Ahimsa Kerp,  & Wind Lothamer from Knight Owl Publishing. The ice world that they were on started to break up. And they decided to go back to the Mi Go base they had encountered a session ago because there could be a portal gate way according to the party's wizard.  We're using quite a few Needleshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11243274667834930867noreply@blogger.com0

Doctor Who gives the BBC its biggest show of New Year’s Day Revolution of the Daleks achieved an initial overnight viewing figure of 4.69m on New Year’s Day. This is up 0.81m (21%) on previous Doctor Who episode The Timeless Children. It is down slightly on the overnights for last New Year’s Day’s Spyfall Part […]

The post VIEWING FIGURES: Doctor Who – Revolution of the Daleks appeared first on Blogtor Who.

The post Video of the Day – Doctor Who: Spyfall, 2019 appeared first on Blogtor Who.

" Like in every other aspect of life, when summoning ideas for fantasy role-playing games, there is always room for new original ideas and pushing of the boundaries of your very own monster inventory."Monsters are like patato chips one can't have enough & in this case its question of adding in an original monster book with a difference. That difference is two strains of mythology & a bit of Needleshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11243274667834930867noreply@blogger.com0

Hi Parents,

You can use the below activities to engage in fun and conversation with your kids over the week.

Preschool
Elementary
Salvation Guide
Kidz Rock Spotify

Check out our ongoing resources for each age group:

• Preschool
• Elementary 
• Collide 
• Parents

The post Parent Cue Cards – January 3rd appeared first on Church of The Rock.

Collide Discussion Questions
Check out our COLLIDE Spotify Playlist!

Decision

Check out our ongoing resources for each age group:

• Preschool
• Elementary 
• Collide 
• Parents

And don’t forget to follow Kidz Rock on Facebook and Instagram!

   

The post Collide – January 3rd appeared first on Church of The Rock.

ACTIVITY PAGES TO DOWNLOAD
SPOTIFY PLAYLIST

Worship Video

Check out our ongoing resources for each age group:

• Preschool
• Elementary 
• Collide 
• Parents

And don’t forget to follow Kidz Rock on Facebook and Instagram!

   

The post Preschool – January 3rd appeared first on Church of The Rock.

ACTIVITIES FOR THIS LESSON

Worship Video

 

Check out our ongoing resources for each age group:

• Preschool
• Elementary 
• Collide 
• Parents

And don’t forget to follow Kidz Rock on Facebook and Instagram!

   

The post Elementary – January 3rd appeared first on Church of The Rock.

RPG: MÖRK BORG

Orn

0 Agility
0 Presence
+2 Strength
+3 Toughness

11 Hit Points

10 silvers, waterskin, 3 days food, magnesium strip, ? sacred scroll, staff (d4), padded armour (-d2, tier 1), sacred scroll of Lucy-Fires Levitation (Hover for Presence +1d10 rounds)

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RPG: Far Away Land

Ewe Gor the Elf

Actions 6 - Luck 2 - Level 1 - XP 0
Brute 2 - Dexterity 3 - Wits 1 - Hit Points 12
Boons: Athletics 1, Manipulate 1, Sneak 1
Flaws: Jealousy, Covetousness
Special: better hearing, better sight, night sight, +1 with an Elfin Bow.

AC 2 Light Armour
Longsword 1d6+1, Dagger 1d6, Belt of 6 Throwing Daggers 1d6
Cloak, backpack, 6 glass bottles of oil, flint and steel, grappling hook, lantern, lock picks, hand mirror, pouch, rope

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So are we pissed at Bill from Green Skeleton gaming Guild Blog?! Erm no not at all, in fact its given our group the opportunity to do a zoom call & discuss what comes next?! There's an opportunity here folks. An alien opportunity.. With Moorcock its all about fading back into the Sword & Sorcery & in this case the world of ice & snow is ending fast because of events within the  Black Blade of theNeedleshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11243274667834930867noreply@blogger.com0

Nox ArchaistA little known but useful Internet fact: Ultima fans and their money are quickly separated. Yes, Gentle Reader, YOU too can make good money selling more Ultima to people who were once into Ultima (most likely back in the 1980s), and now want more Ultima (most likely in the style of the 1980s). That is: in its day, the Ultima CRPG series had elicited so many positive feelings, and built such a fanatically loyal audience that even today, thirty-something years after the heyday of the series, and more than twenty after the days the Ultima Dragons (an overactive fan group who seemed to run half the late 90s Internet), pitching an Ultima project to the Kickstarter audience is sure to start a stampede. The fans will pay, and they have deep pockets – so make sure to open up those “name a Pirate/Barkeep/Lord after yourself” reward tiers, and design a stretch goal where Lord British and Iolo will personally deliver your boxed copy, and sing Stones right in your living room.
Indeed, Yours Truly (although a Johnny-come-lately, and not an Ultima Dragon) has spent generously on various Ultima-inspired Kickstarters. There was Unknown Realm for the PC and Commodore-64, which, three years after its proposed date of delivery, increasingly looks like either a very unsuccessful game development project, or a very successful scam. There is Skald: Against the Black Priory, which has released multiple increasingly impressive demos, and seems to be late but firmly on track. There was Underworld Ascendant, a game… no, come to think of it, that one did not exist, and I did not foolishly waste $100 on a boxed copy that never even shipped in any form people were promised. Yes: too many failures can harden a man’s heart, and make him wary of funding Yet Another Ultima-Knockoff Kickstarter. Thus, I missed out on Nox Archaist, which promised all the usual things these projects tend to promise (a new Ultima homage game! an endorsement by Lord British! pixels! a game box! a thick manual on real PAPER! a CLOTH MAP! some useless renfaire gizmo related to the game story!), and then I forgot all about it. But Nox Archaist came out just as promised, game box and hand-sealed letter and all – and you can still buy a post-Kickstarter version, along with the T-shirt and the spiral-bound notepad. (Or you can buy an inexpensive digital version if you make your saving throw vs. Temptation. Go on, I will wait.)
The following review is the result of around 8-10 hours of play, encompassing the “first act” of a highly open-ended and obviously much larger game – certainly not the whole picture, but a reasonably wide one.
For a hundred dollars, you also get a dongle
If you are asking yourself, “Did he really write ‘Apple ][?’” or “Isn’t that something very old?”, the answer is “yes”. This game was developed for an early 1980s computer system, and although it was done with a lot of hindsight, and pushes the system’s capabilities beyond the limits possible in 1983-1985, it is not just a game with a vaguely chic retro aesthetic – it is a real approximation of a major, no-expenses-spared Apple ][ title. On your PC, it will run on an emulator (no special computer wizardry required), but if you are so inclined, you can make a disk image on a handful of Apple ][ floppy disks, and play it like it was really meant to be played.
Shipwrecked in CGAlandTo say Nox Archaist has “crude” graphics, or that its speaker-based beeps and boops (lovingly emulated on your sound card, running in a high-end Windows 10 environment) is to miss the point. Nox Archaist has varied and fairly sophisticated graphics for 1984, with sprites to simulate your character swinging his (or her, or xir – yes, there is an “other” gender, and weirdly enough, that’s not woke posturing, but a loving homage to Ultima III: Exodus) sword, or sitting in a chair, or swimming in shallow water, or sinking into quicksand. This is the best simple tile-based graphics can offer with its weird colour artefactsand reliance on basic symbols to carry its meaning. Modern games depict; old games symbolise; and this lost art is new again in Nox Archaist. From simple props come surprisingly meaningful and distinct places – the crude hovels of a wayside village, the throne room of a castle, or the depths of the Mythical Underworld. In fact, the game even features bits of modulated speech, something which would only come to Ultima with Ultima VII: The Black Gate (1992). This is, if anything, a game way before its time.
On the trail of the orcsBehind the archaic façade runs a remarkably complex game. It has a rather intricate user interface with very Ultima-like quirks – you still e(X)it your horse to dismount, (I)gnite a torch to illuminate your surroundings, and execute a series of Tabs and number keys to bring up inventory and character sheets – but it is not really hard to learn, and quickly becomes second nature while allowing a fairly good level of environmental interaction. The charm of the early Ultimas often comes from layering a dozen small “tricks” on a simple basic system of movement, fighting, and conversing with NPCs, and using them to build a rich world and a complicated game. Nox Archaist has this stuff in spades – lockpicking, jumping over obstacles with horses, engaging in ship-to-ship combat with cannons or boarding action, day/night cycles for NPCs, line-of-sight vision (and the cover of nighttime/underground darkness) for your party, excavating rubble with a pickaxe, falling into quicksand, and all these individually tiny little things – make for a rich and fascinating game environment.
***
NAME! JOB! BYE! NAME! JOB! BYE!At its core, Nox Archaist is a game of investigation. Sent by Queen Issa to investigate a mysterious cult that has taken foothold over a cluster of islands, captured by your enemies and imprisoned in a ship’s brig, but saved in a shipwreck, you will have to uncover a way to an unseen and powerful enemy while building a powerful and well-equipped adventuring party on the side. Your first clues will lead to a small town, then an increasingly open world crisscrossed by clues and leads. This is Ultima in its best sense: talking to NPCs, you hit on capitalised KEYWORDS, which lead to other places and people you will find in a different corner of the world.
There is a “quality-of-life” feature in the form of a simple quest journal, but to untangle the leads in Nox Archaist, you will have to take notes in a real notebook, and spend time poring over your player map (this is missing a whole lot of locations you will gradually discover, or get pointed to). Perhaps you will have to journey to Castle Suurtheld and consult Nox Yvviar on CULT activities. Or you will have to visit one of the Queen’s agents in Knaerwood and ask him for HELP. Perhaps you will also seek out one of the local trainers to improve your skills. Or the answer may lie in a book in some library (these are small, brief vignettes high on local flavour).
8 AM. Lord Hraakvar is still asleepThe essence is the sense of an interconnected milieu, one whose locations you will revisit again and again, getting deeper into a labyrinth of sub-quests, references, and mysterious finds. Like Ultima, the world opens up gradually. First sticking to the overland and the proximity of settlements, you eventually start exploring the wilderness and smaller dungeons; then find that these dungeons open into enormous multi-level affairs that feel like OD&D’s “Mythical Underworld” megadungeons (and they might all be connected on the bottom in a deep interconnected realm: at least this was the case in the greatest of Ultimas, Warriors of Destiny). You will acquire new ways of navigating the world: horses which let you easily ford rivers which were once hazardous; skiffs to sail shallow waters; and ships to brave the stormy seas and visit distant islands (these larger ships can store up to two skiffs to make landing convenient). The setting expands as you play – and there might even be a flying carpet at the end.
BuxomThe Isles of Wynmar is a high fantasy setting. In our ultra-modern age of ceaseless deconstruction, this vaguely positive Merrie Olde Englande hodge-podge of benevolent monarchs, wise-cracking peasants and chivalric nobles looks almost avant-garde. The isles have their troubles with corruption, mountain orcs emerging from their strongholds to raid human villages, and the scheming cult that’s spreading tentacles across the land, but it is a place where good and evil are distinct and well demarcated. It loses some shades of grey, but it gains playfulness and colour, something refreshing in a more cynical era where mediaeval worlds are usually presented through a ubiquitous mud-filter. Wynmar scales back some of Britannia’s “thee and thou” pretension, but it has its jocular bards, stout bowmen and saucy tavern wenches in the best traditions of the genre. Public order is maintained vigorously: I once attacked a cloud of buzzing insects near a rural outhouse, and was soon attacked and decimated by the local militia. Now that’s law and order!
***
Nox Archaist’s character building is nominally free-form – you can advance your characters in any direction from hand-to-hand combat to archery, assassination and magic – but the difficulty curve encourages strong specialisation. You are better off with three niche heroes than three generalists, as they will be able to wield better equipment (there are strong stat limits) and dish out better punishment, while a jack-of-all-trades group of PCs will find themselves in a serious difficulty trap.
The Goblin Shaman: Attempt 32After the first few battles with hooligans and rabble-rousers, the level of challenge goes up. Your first dungeon foray will bring you against a group of wolves, and here, the need to toughen up will be made obvious after the first few utter defeats. The true test of your offensive and defensive abilities will be the mini-boss of the first serious dungeon, the Goblin Shaman. If you can beat him and his band, you have built your adventuring party correctly – if you can’t, you may want to earn some more experience, or reconsider your options. And it will get harder: just venture a bit beyond the shaman’s cave to find out.
With these considerations in mind, the stat/equipment accumulation game is simple but satisfying. You do not have Ultima’s fascinating reagent-based magic system, but there is an abundance of stuff to obtain, equip, and go to town with. Armour goes from cloth, leather and brigandine to chain, scale, and plate, and right up to frost, storm, drake and dragon (for the mightiest heroes). For the start, having the requisite Strength to equip a pair of chain gauntlets feels like a reward well earned.
***
A round for the local ladsAs I have outlined above, Nox Archaist is a worthy successor to the Ultima tradition. Here, you will find a large and deep game comparable to Quest of the Avatar or Warriors of Destiny (although with the graphics of the older Exodus) with all the quirks of something out of the early 1980s. This is an important qualifier: the game is from a tradition that predates a lot of the games that established the way modern CRPGs are made, and while it makes numerous improvements to make the formula easy on gamers today, it comes with CGA-tier aesthetics, bizarro discoloured fonts, and antediluvian ideas about game design. That is to say, I can’t recommend it highly enough to fellow old-school gamers. If this is the particular experience you are looking for, Nox Archaist will deliver in spades; if you are too young to have experienced the old Ultimas in their time (this also describes Yours Truly), this is a good occasion to try.
Some well-deserved rest

 Happy New Year everyone! It is 2021 and several Bat in the Attic Games items are happening right out of the gate. 

Basic Rules for the Majestic Fantasy RPG.

I got the proof copies of the Basic Rules and and they look good. At the urging of a friend I took the time to create the cover for Hardcover version so you will have the option picking either as your budget allows.

The Basic Rules for the Majestic Fantasy RPG, Softcover, $14.99The Basic Rules for the Majestic Fantasy RPG, Hardcover, $19.99The Basic Rules for the Majestic Fantasy RPG, PDF, $9.99
A set of rules for creating and advancing characters from level 1 to 5. Has the Burglar, Cleric of Mitra, Fighter, and Magic User classes, plus backgrounds, combat rules, equipment, and spells. For the referee there are lists of monsters, NPCs, and magic items suitable to challenge and reward your players during a campaign. These rules feature abilities for use for when character do things outside of combat and spellcasting. Along with advice for referees on how to use the available mechanics to craft rulings. Finally, a basic overview of how to bring the world outside of the dungeon to life is provided.
A 204 page RPG compatible with the Swords & Wizardry rules Majestic Fantasy, Basic Rules,  Reference Cards

This is a series of printed (or PDF) aids that I use to help players to quickly generate characters for the Basic Rules for the Majestic Fantasy RPG. This aid is in the form of printed cards or tiles. There is an initial card that you hand the player that outlines how the character generation process works. From there, the players pick a class, a background, and buy equipment using the individual cards as a reference to fill out their character sheet. 
The print version is made using 8” by 10” coated stock. They are quite sturdy and appear to be resistant to spills and stains. The printed version has 20 cards that support up to 5 player generating characters. Five common cards and three cards for each of the classes and three spell reference cards.

Majestic Fantasy, Basic Rules,  Reference Cards (Cards) $14.99Majestic Fantasy, Basic Rules,  Reference Cards (PDF)   $3.99
Quick Reference Cards for Swords and Wizardry Complete

This is a series of printed (or PDF) aids that I use to help players to quickly generate characters for Swords & Wizardry Complete by Frog God Games. This aid is in the form of printed cards or tiles. There is an initial card that you hand the player that outlines how the character generation process works. From there, the players pick a class, a background, and buy equipment using the individual cards as a reference to fill out their character sheet. 
I have refined these cards  over the past decade while running convention and game store sessions and found that it will allow a player to completely generate a character within 15 to 20 minutes. 
These cards contain all of the information needed for assassins, clerics, druids, fighters, magic-users, monks, paladins, rangers, and thieves, for level 1 to 6. On the back of each class card is an equipment list.

Quick Reference Cards for Swords and Wizardry Complete (Card) $24.99Quick Reference Cards for Swords and Wizardry Complete (PDF) $3.99

Wilderlands of High Fantasy Deal of the Day
By happy coincidence, Wilderlands of High Fantasy Maps is the Deal of the Day over on DriveThruRPG.  The deal will go live at 10 am Eastern Time, Saturday January 2nd.
Note that buying this will get you the Guidebook PDF as well. There are 18 maps to the Wilderlands divided into four sets of guidebooks and maps. This deal is for the first set of five maps including the City State of the Invincible Overlord.
The guidebook has an introduction and map commentary by me,. Each map in the guidebook is detailed with the following listings: Villages, Castles & Citadels, Idyllic Isles, Ruins & Relics, and Lurid Lairs. Any statistic or rule is compatible with Swords and Wizardry and various classic editions of the original roleplaying game.
This deal on the first set is a good way to see if folks like the series without having to invest all at once. You will be credited the cost of the PDF if you decide the buy the PDF bundle later. Finally if you decide to buy print, I include the PDF of maps and guidebooks at no additional charge. The print version of each map is two 12" by 18" poster maps. They also have a generous overlap to make joining the map easy or to track features across the map boundaries.

Wrapping it Up
This weekend has been pretty busy with releases and promotions. I hope you find my offering useful and above all fun! Here is to the new year and it all its possibilities including gaming. 
I am thankful for having all of you on board and looking forward to your feedback and input. The next thing up on my plate is wrapping up the Wild North which expands the Majestic Fantasy Realms to the region north of Blackmarsh.

By Tyler Thompson Sad Fishe Games Zweihander Level ?

An estate improperly acquired, an orchard besieged by vengeful spirits and decay, a labrynth of trees and a haunted house.  Blackacre Orchard was once the producer of the finest apples and cider in the Marches, but no longer- now it lay abandoned, with foul beings prowling its tree rows and manor halls.   The estate much be purged of such evils, or the evils appeased with the life of the one who wronged them, if the cider is the flow freely once more.  Whether the new owner, Tostein, or the widow of the prior owner, Amalia, survives the night depends on the actions of the player Character, but either way a warm cup of cider awaits them once the job is done. 

It’s the New Year! Let’s start it off right, shall we?! I see a lot of Zweihander flooding my feeds … for the past fucking year. Let’s take a looksee!

This 28 page adventure details a haunted orchard and cidery with a dozen or so locations. Abstracted. Devoid of interesting writing. Engaging in the typical issues with writing. I wish I wish I hadn’t killed that fish.

I don’t even know where to start.

The map to this is half numbered. Meaning that dude took a Dyson map and numbered about half or so of the rooms and then, rather than numbering the rest, tries to describe them in the text. “The smaller room on the floor is a …” Why people do this I don’t know. It’s fairly easy to throw some numbers on a map. And some numbers WERE thrown on the map in this case. But not all of them. Which leaves the DM to number and highlight themselves or try and navigate the text during play, hunting for the room descriptions in long paragraphs of text. I’d love to fuck know why people do this.

Some dude wants you to take care of ghost/curse problem in his orchard. There’s no reward mentioned AT ALL. IE: a lack of care on the designers part with not even the basics being covered. The dude is gruff, short with the party. Hesitant to describe the events on the property. What the fuck? Why do designers do this? Ok, dude, Fuck You, I guess we won’t go investigate your orchard if you can’t be bothered toat least be polite to the people who are doing the job, evidentally for free.

The descriptions are abstracted, everywhere. “Local authorities” or “local leadership” is mentioned several times. Just give thema fucking name and three words of personality! “The nightmare phylactery is above the staff in the loft.” What is the phylactery? Fuck You, that’s what it is. No detail. None at all. Instead we get sentence after sentence of “The guesthouse was once where …” and then “Unfortunately much time has passed and now …” IE: the adventure is focused on telling a literary tale, creating a setting guide, rather than actually being an adventure to be used at the table. “In each bedroom a Tenebrae resides …” and that’s it. No description. No Ghosts of the Sins of the Past. Just generic monster shit. This is what drags horror adventures down, especially. Generic ghost instead of a realized PERSON that can bring horror to the encounter. It’s just fucking abstration. And there’s nothing good about abstraction. 

To get to the house, at night, you have to endure a maze of orchard trees. Roll on a 10 entry table until you get a 10. If you get a 10 within the first five rolls, then ignore it, we are told. About six of the ten entries are monsters. So, just fight random abstracted baddies in the orchard until boredom threshold is reached. Why? WHY?

There’s little in the way of interesting writing. I think only one thing I found interesting. The widow of the former owner is now a drunk, in town, and will accost the players. SHe will get increasing agitated with them. Having encountered persistent people with increasing agitation before, I can tell you that THIS encounter is a good one. The entire adventure needs more evocative writing, less abstraction, more actual play, and some thought to the actual adventure mechanics. 

Instead, get a single rat buried in the middle of a wall of text paragraph.

Such is life …

The preview is the entire thing, which is good. But you don’t get a level range, anywhere in the product, which is bad. 

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/330906/Marchlands-Pocket-Adventure-Blackacre-Orchard–Adventure-for-Zweihander?src=newest_community&filters=45582_2110_0_0_0?1892600

 Well it looks like tonight's game was cancelled due to freezing & rain mostly from the rain hitting the ground then turning our drive way into a skating ring. Now over the past couple months there have been a huge number of Stormbringer rpg posts. Mostly due to the nostalgia that our rpg group of players has for the game.  Now with that said its been a bit of three or four OSR rpg trick pony to Needleshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11243274667834930867noreply@blogger.com0