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 There are the rare of the absolute rare of the collectables & tonight I came across Lost Caverns of Tsojconth (1976) – The Original Edition of AD&D Module S4 on Wayne's Books blog. This is the original tourament module from WinterCon V, a gaming convention sponsored by the Metro Detroit Gamers (MDG) in 1976. According to the S4 The Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth By Gary Gygax wiki entry there are Needleshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11243274667834930867noreply@blogger.com0

I remember several years ago taking my car to a Ford dealership for scheduled service that would require much of a day. A shuttle driver was assigned to take me home.

On the way I learned that he had emigrated from Lancashire, England, to Canada, thirty-seven years earlier. That’s the region of my parents had moved to Canada from more than a century ago, so we had a point of shared interest.

When I told him I was a minister he asked my opinion about a son, thirty-nine years old, who lived with him and his wife. He described behavior that needed professional treatment if not inpatient psychiatric care, behavior that had caused them to call the police more than once. 

Yet this man felt outside help was not possible. His son refused the help of professionals, thinking it was they who were beaming sinister harm into his head. 

Upon arriving at my home, he turned off the car and talked some more. Later in the day, when he came to take me back to the dealership, he resumed the conversation. There seemed to be no relief possible for his and his wife’s deep distress.  

In response to my questions, he said that neither of his parents had ever gone to church. I asked if he had a Bible in his home. He thought so but had never read it. I encouraged him to find it and read from the Gospel of Mark, the shortest account of the life of Jesus. He might find some comfort or hope there, and in a faith community. God says of his word, “My word … shall accomplish that which I please” (Isaiah 55:11).

Not long after I arrived home, Kathleen and I spoke with a faraway couple who were battling the slow devastation of Alzhiemer’s disease. The care-giver husband was worn down by his task. 

And I would soon receive another call from a man who had lost his wife and family to an unwanted divorce. 

Then, as now, these troubles around us made me think of the life motto of a nineteenth-century minister in England: “Be kind; everyone you meet is having a hard time.” 

Indeed, there is a thin veneer of materialistic sufficiency across our land (and we thank God for the abundance of modern life), yet beneath that sufficiency is the reality identified in the ancient Book of Job that “man is born to trouble as surely as sparks fly upward” (Job 5:7, NIV).

God has placed himself in Christ, and the Spirit into us, to minister to the suffering for his glory. And so we must often ask, what help can we be?

In Galatians 6:2, St. Paul first says, “Bear ye one another’s burdens and so fulfill the law of Christ” (6:2, KJV). Only three verses later he writes, “Every man shall bear his own burden (6:5). 

These verses seem contradictory. J.B. Phillips’ paraphrase my help. In his version, the first verse is rendered, “Carry each other’s burdens and so live out the law of Christ,” and the second, “For every man must ‘shoulder his own pack.’” 

Like soldiers in war we all have our own packs to carry, and often they are very heavy. But we must not let their weight keep us from lending a hand to someone nearby whose burden may be even heavier. This, as Paul writes, is living out the law of Christ.

Thankfully, it is the Spirit of Christ who enables us. May he keep us full of his grace.  

If a soccer ball is half-full, every kick flops after a few yards. But, fully inflated — reinforced from the inside — the kicks may still hurt, but the ball rises higher and flies farther.

First published May 17, 2010; revised February 6, 2023.

Photo credit: Zach Dischner (via flickr.com)

My new memoir, FROM KITCHEN CHAIR TO PULPIT: A Memoir of Family, Faith, and Ministry, has just been published. I hope you will click on one of the links that follow to be taken to the page on these sites that enable you to view and potentially purchase the paperback or ebook. My book shows just how extraordinary the pastoral life can be, describing how I prepared for ministry and ministered to three congregations and then, as a bishop, to pastors as a bishop, with the help of my wife, Kathleen, and the support of our children as they grew up from children to adults.

 Over the years there was a ton of writing that I've done on our Old Mars campaign. And actually quite a few notebooks filled with crossover points with various Public Domain Pulp writers & other resources. Echohawk (fuck you buddy & your thieving blog) decided to take my session reports, random tables, ecologies, campaign notes, & whatnot then convert everything over to the Numenera rpg ?!  WTH?Needleshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11243274667834930867noreply@blogger.com0

Have you ever wanted to try Weaving? I have dabbled a bit, and it’s a fun hobby with surprising variety! In this Weaving Book Trio Giveaway, I’m sending three wonderful books to one lucky winner: Cardboard Loom Weaving by Harumi Kageyama, Shadow Weave Simply by Susan Kesler-Simpson, and Innovative Weaving on the Frame Loom by...

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 Where things stand after 37 5-mile hexes.

 

You might also be interested in the zoomed-in map of one-mile hexes, within the borders of the five-mile hexes. Click to enlarge.

Pookie did a review of GOZR and he brings up a point that's been raised before: GOZR doesn't have an example scenario. People always say that RPGs need a sample adventure so people can immediately get a feel for how the game works and what you do with it.

And I agree. It is always a benefit and rarely a detriment to have a sample scenario in a game. Hell, my first RPG, the D&D red box, was centered heavily on that opening scenario that held your hand to learn the rules. Very effective.

I didn't include one with GOZR because I couldn't quite get one finished. Eventually I created Tower Trouble, a one page tower crawl (which will probably be included with GOZR RISING). But doing a full scenario for this game proved quite impossible for me to do. Why?

I think it's because this game is a toolkit. It is meant to inspire you to just play. You should roll on tables (or pick) to generate settings, NPCs, and situations. The material is meant for use and re-use both within the game itself and in other games you play.

Pre-written adventures are more like snapshots of a moment. A different vibe.

For GOZR RISING, I do want to include some adventures. But I'm not sure what form they will take. Honestly, I don't know if the default format of these pages is best suited to the task. An adventure will be looked at mostly by the GM, not by the players. But I designed the game book to be looked at by everyone. Therefore I think I might take a different approach for adventures and - GASP! - write them. With fonts and words and stuff.

But if I do that, I won't include them in the actual GOSR RISING book. They'll be in a separate book. Which, I think, is kind of a cool idea. You'll get the new GOZR book with all its color and art and handwritten craziness with new monsters, gadgets, and so on. And you'll get a nifty companion book with some slightly more traditionally-presented adventures.

As I type this, I'm reminded of Mörk Borg. That book is also heavily visual in its presentation. Indeed, when I started working on GOZR in early 2020, I got my copy of Mörk Borg at about the same time and was inspired by it. But the sample adventure for that game was in fact presented more traditionally and is even printed on different paper than the rest of the book (fancy!). I don't know if it is the case, but I suspect they might have done this for the same reason I outline above. It just makes more sense.

Still, similar to Tower Trouble, I might include a few one page "dungeons" in the main book. Just some locations to pepper into your games. The adventure book will be slightly more fleshed-out, perhaps.

We'll see.

 

I've had the 13th Age core book for sometime, but after picking up most of the rest of the publications for the game in a recent Bundle of Holding, I decided to give it a try. My online group was willing to give it a try. 

For the unfamiliar, 13th Age is sort of an "alternate evolution" of D&D. Debuting in 2013, it sort sort of took D&D 4e and stepped in a rules lighter direction, adding some freeform elements, quite different from the specification of 3e versions of the game. It's roughly equivalent in crunch, I would say, to 5e, but lighter than 5e in some areas.

We spent the first session in character creation. It took perhaps a little longer than 5e because the freeform elements required a little more thought. What are these elements? Well, the biggest is that every character has "One Unique Thing" some (noncombat) thing that sets them apart from perhaps everyone else. Not only does this serve as a character hook, but it allows the player to define something about the world. 

Then there are backgrounds. Unlike 5e backgrounds which are essentially packages of skills and accoutrements, 13th Age backgrounds are player defined (and presumably GM negotiated) broad skills. You could do something simple like "Miner," but it could also be something like (one my wife picked) "Gnomish Debutante." Like the One Unique Thing, backgrounds have the effect of fleshing out the world to a degree. The only downside I see to them is that characters might not be as "well-rounded" in the arena of adventure related tasks as their 5e counterparts. Still, that just means that (like older versions of D&D) skills are likely of less importance.

One final element not found in typical D&D is that every character has a relationship to one of the settings Icons, vaguely defined (so the GM can flesh them out more) beings of great power and importance in the setting. Characters can have a positive, conflicted, or negative relationship with one or more Icons. These are meant to be adventure hooks. You roll to see when they might come into play.

Anyway, the group seem to like what they've seen of the system so far and are interested in giving it a go.

Two hexes north and one northwest of Alakran.

 

A playa is a dry lake bed, which might hold water briefly in the rainy season, as this one does -- and the water is relatively free of salt. It is the center of the range of several herds of wild camels who venture 10 miles (2 hexes) afield west of the Scarp. When their playa is waterless, they drink from the river that feeds the winged camels' lake, carefully avoiding those superior beings.

Well, when they can. Among the herd is a winged foal, sired by the leader of the winged camels in an unwitting drive toward genetic diversity. When it is old enough to fly it will join its kindred, as these by-blows always do. In the meantime it might be proitable to discover a winged steed of a kind that until now has been very successful at eluding capture.

 Abyss is one of those worlds that cries out for far more attention from our group of players. So tonight I got the guys involved in a bit of pirate action. A minor mining concern had the Blackguard doing a bit of guard duty out on the deep mining activity they were performing. The Blackguard were not expecting much action. What they got was piracy of the highest order as a rival pirate gang's Needleshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11243274667834930867noreply@blogger.com0

The post 1675 appeared first on Looking For Group.

As I said previously, I've been on a GOZR kick. This means I've been working on pages for the second book: GOZR Rising! As with the original, I'm keeping it organic. I make notes and list table contents in a spreadsheet where applicable, but mostly I'm drawing it on the canvas as it enters my head. Because in my head is where the gooz live. And, I'm told, they also live at some gaming tables. A fact that gives me comfort in the long, dark nights.

No schedule on this. It'll come as it does and eventually I'll have a book I can put out there and smile about while you all scratch your heads and say "Why the hell would anyone do a game THIS WAY??".

 "EPIC! is Silvia Clemente 's entry to Darrick Dishaw's Cha'alt Game Jam:"In the Adityan homeworld, The Cronos, an ancient power source, has awakened and disrupted from its slumber by events taking place far away on the remote desert planet Cha'alt. The Cronos will drag its Adityan Guards all the way across the galaxy and into the path of a group of scoundrels forcefully recruited to police the Needleshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11243274667834930867noreply@blogger.com0

When the players kicked in the door and barged into the room SWAT-team style, I suddenly had to deal with seven player characters and ten mercenaries on one side coming up against 28 rabidly bestial monster men. We have a limited amount of time to play, ideally you would be able to cover around six encounters or more within a single three-hour session. What to do?!

What I did was take a concept from Swords and Spells: treat homogenous monster groups as a unit, give the unit as a whole the sum total of each individual’s hit points, and then removing one figure each time the unit as a whole takes damage equal to the AVERAGE number of hit-points of the individuals within the grouping. Because after all, did I really need to make a list of 28 monsters, roll their hit-points separately, and then carefully track which ones are partially dead and which ones are mostly dead as the combat grinds on?

If you’re doing this “theater of the mind style”, you cannot track the individual locations of each monster and determine who is getting hit by what attack. AD&D combat is abstract enough that in this situation that you are going to be randomly determining who is hit by what anyway. Why not make a choice here that makes is a whole lot easier to manage all of this consistently?

It’s definitely fast and easy. But it also introduces some new side effects. The fellow that plays the notorious Macho Mandalf in Trollopulous breaks this down concisely:

I really liked the improvised mass combat application of damage to the 20+ enemy; save lots of time that would really not add to the fun if done individually. This method also implicitly allows a sort of ‘Cleave’ effect which is otherwise not in AD&D. Hit 3 times out of a possible 4 and did 25 Damage out of a possible 39. In normal combat that would probably kill three but in mass combat I guess it killed 5 or 6; so yes I do like it. :)

Do I mind rules interpretations that allow us to scale up the size of our combats even at first level? Not at all! Do I like approaches to the game that make fighters the premier class of the overworld? ABSOLUTELY!

What would I do differently next time? Well, I’ll tell you:

• The men-at-arms group should have been treated the same way as the monsters. This levels the playing field with this approach while also giving peoples’ player characters an edge over monsters and hirelings.
• The successful hits from the monsters would need one additional roll to determine whether or not the PC group or the hireling group took the hit. If the PC’s are hit, a random PC from the ones that were not specifically held back for spell-casting or poltroonery would be selected. If the hirelings are hit, a simple division of the total damage received will indicate how may of them remain in fighting form.
• Note that under this abstraction there is no way to determine which of these hirelings would have merely been “dropped” due to the AD&D zero hit-point rule. To find this, simply roll a number of damage dice equal to the total number of hirelings killed. Any of these that come up as a “1” will indicate that this particular hireling will be able to recover.

Furthermore, the Druid’s Entangle spell should not be as effective in melee as the way we played it last Thursday night. If it is cast into a melee, it will affect BOTH SIDES equally a la Cornwallis firing grapeshot at his own men at the Battle of Guilford Courthouse. Its best use will be against units that are not currently engaged in melee. So Entangle will see use in scenarios such as these:

• The player’s hirelings are engaged with the enemy’s front line troops. The druid player casts entangle at the enemy shaman that is currently being shielded from melee attacks by the throng.
• The players are leaving the dungeon and believe they are being pursued. In order to cover their escape, the druid cases entangle on the winding passage that connects the second level to the first.
• The monsters are too far away to charge the players, so the druid elects to cast entangle in order to prevent a charge the following turn. The monsters that make their save elect to flee the following turn and the players burn up the rest with flaming oil.

Obviously, entangle should NOT be a better offensive spell than the magic-user’s sleep. Last Thursday’s Finely Honed Murder Machine was clearly inconsistent with the overall intent of the game. (If any player says, “oh yeah we knew that we were just testing you” or “yeah, I tried to tell you that but I couldn’t get a word in on it during the game” then their characters will regret it. Maybe you should make an effort to help make sure game-breaking rules interpretations never get off the ground in the first place?! Bah!)

For more on player-reactions to this ruling, see the latest episode of Geek Gab!

I've been using Spotify since it launched. I don't know who owns it or what happens behind the scenes. I admit full ignorance on this matter. All I know is it has shit tons of music and I have logged a shit ton of hours using it.

Anyway, here's one of my "daily mixes" that the fine folks at Spotify put together just for me. I feel so special! It's actually a nice jam. I mean... these are all songs from my favorites list, so duh.

ROCK OUT

I finally added a lot more stuff to my itch.io page. Added GOZR and the rest of the Black Pudding zines that weren't up there yet. It only took me like... a couple years.

Oh yeah, it seems that I put up a GOZR spiral bound notebook on Redbubble at some point. At first I saw this and thought "Motherfucking pirates!", but no. This is mine. I'm not cool enough to be pirated. I think.

Lately I've been on a GOZR kick, which is very nice because I do love the game. I'm super proud of it. The system is nice and simple and it works. The book itself, which is the most important thing for me as a creator, is a labor of love and I'm happy to have completed it.

I'm not the kind of creator who gets hung up on one thing and feels compelled to "support it". I'm happy enough to never do another GOZR project and do other things instead. But it just so happens that my muses have aligned under an ugly banner and I'm their slave at the moment. Niiiice.

Here are some little character sheets I doodled in a wee sketchbook. I started with one and ended up with a handful and counting. Here's a trick to see if I really love a game's aesthetic: can I do a million iterations of its character sheet? Obviously the answer is yes for old school D&D and it's many clones. I've also done a handful of Troika! sheets. But now it seems that GOZR hits the sweet spot. It has a discrete number of "bubbles" to draw: Cunning, Magic, Prowess, Hit Points, GOOZ, Defense, and WIZ. Each of these items has a shape and purpose and I can easily move them around on a sheet.

When I'm less familiar with a game, or it has a lot more moving parts, I find it difficult to get the vibe and make a character sheet. This why you don't seem me doing a ton of various game sheets. I need to understand a game and really get it to make a good sheet.

Aside from character sheets, I'm also working on new pages for the inevitable GOZR Rising! I'll share some of that next.

 Two hexes northwest and one north of Alakran.

 

The stylus of Hanthu has recorded many things that have been called lies, fancies, and figments. One tale of Hanthu that is proven beyond doubt, though, tells what happened when the holy woman Namirra saw that her faithful camel was growing old, and that it was right to release it from service.

They were at rest under a low tree, by a lake in a plain among the Dhuga Hills, close by to the Scarp.  Namirra spoke to the camel in its own language (such wisdom had Namirra!) and said,

"As thou hast carried me from place to place in conformity with the will of Mitra, so now mayest thou petition Mitra, whose grace is unbounded, and ask for a great boon."

"My aunt," for so the camel had come to address his rider, "I know not what manner of boon I may wish for. Tell me of others of your kind, and the boons they have petitioned Great Mitra for."

And so she told him of men who asked for the boon of eternal life, and women who asked for the gift of speaking all languages, and others who asked for gifts to help others. But the camel, stubborn as always, had his own ideas. He asked,

"O auntie, as long and patiently as I walk, there is no denying that my feet are slow, and the parts of this great earth which I have seen are as small as the steps of a water-insect on a mighty seas. Let me soar as the swallow soars, and see all of great Mitra's land with the eyes of its Protector."

And the next morning, through Namirra's intercession, the camel awoke to find plumed wings sprouting from its shoulders, the size and color of the giant condor's own span. And with some practice, he flew high, and though his years of life were few remaining, he in his far journeys sired thirty winged camels who bred true. 

The members of this breed eventually found each other, and decided to make their home far away from the haunts of man. They pride themselves that never more shall they carry a rider or a burden, for Namirra has set them free.

And the proof of Hanthu's tale is that the descendants of Namirra's camel, winged and proud as he was, numbering forty, have come to dwell by this very lake where their forefather awoke with plumage. And though they resist being ridden, they need help. Alas, the river that feeds the lake no longer flows as it once did. In their flight the camels have seen that further upstream, the flow has been diverted into a cave by a mortared dam that they have not the strength or tools to knock down. But that cave holds tales for another time, tales that certainly would not be believed any more than if they came from the stylus of Hanthu.

 First of all, fuck Echohawk & his thieving blog. I'm going to be moving forward with this blog for the moment until I can find another blog page  too support Swords & Stitchery blog. For the moment, the Echohawk situation is put to rest. And over the day I got together with various friends & cohorts. We spoke at length about the situation. The general consesus was to keep blogging. However the Needleshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11243274667834930867noreply@blogger.com0

Three hexes northwest of Alakran.

In this dull stretch of land between the low, eroded ridges that mark the beginning of the Dhuga range, let's talk about the weather.

I realize I never updated my old post about weather dice to discuss the dice system I have ended up using in actual play for many years. It relies on normal d6, not the Chessex weather d8, and has been fairly successful across a few campaigns.

Weather for the day (or a 12 hour or 6 hour period) is determined by a roll of 3d6, which are looked at separately for a combined weather picture. The overall impression comes form the following icon table, which somewhat corresponds to the standard arrangement of pips on the die:

Temperature is determined by the preponderance of 1's to 5's. The two cancel each other out; each 1 not matched by a 5 correspond to warmer temperatures of +10F/5C, and each 5 not matched by a 1 to colder temperatures of -10F/5C, compared to the average for the climate and season. The average temperature in Spring in the region is 75F/22C by day and 60F/15C by night.

Wind is determined by the preponderance of 3's compared to 1's. The typical climate norm, observed in the region, is for light breeze (1-2 on the Beaufort scale); if 3's outnumber 1's by 1 it means light wind (3-4), by 2 it means strong wind (5-6), and three 3's means a dangerous wind (7+). More 1's than 3's means dead calm. The Scarp means that winds from the east in East Wahattu, and from the west in west Dulsharna, are not often seen. Dangerous winds from the south will be sandstorms in the second and third months of spring.

Clouds and precipitation depend on climate, which determines how much 4 and 6 results are cancelled out in general or by other die results. A 6 result always comes with clouds.

The first month of Spring, called Nisannu throughout the region, comes after the rainy winter and is a "very dry" climate. One 6 is automatically cancelled, and 1-2 cancels 4-6. This means that light rain requires two 6'es with no 1-2's to be rolled, and moderate rain is only had once every other season (3 6's, 1/216 days).

The other two months, Iyarru and Simannu, are "arid." In the daytime, one 4 and two 6's are automatically cancelled out, and 1-2 cancels 4. This means cloud cover is rare and light rain very rare. In the night, clouds and rain occur as in Nisannu.

In the war between sun and clouds, throughout Spring, 1 (no clouds) will always win over 2 (partly cloudy).

Continuing weather: If you want to simulate consistent weather day to day, roll 3 dice in order and one extra,  and if the extra rolls a number you saw the previous day, swap it in for the first number rolled you did not see the previous day.

You can also do this for 12 hour (3+2 dice) or 6 hour (3+3 dice) periods.

Example: Weather covering the days 4 through 6 Nisannu is rolled.

4 Nisannu: 5-1-1 means it is hot and cloudless (one more 1 than 5); 27C by day and 20C by night.

5 Nisannu: 4-5-4 + 5. We drop the 4 and substitute the 5, making 5-5-4. Ironically this means a sudden change to cold, cloudy weather, only 12C by day and overcast!

6 Nisannu: 5-6-5 + 6. The added 6 does not match the previous day so it is dropped. The cold weather continues, so does the cloud cover (a cancelled 6 still means some cloud), and it seems it is trying to rain -- but does not succeed because one 6 is cancelled.

Daily weather gives texture to travel and activities outdoors, and sometimes can throw challenges of extreme heat, wind, and precipitation at the players -- which will be detailed more in a later post.