Wednesday Comics: Holiday Shopping Guide

Want to give the gift of comics this holiday? Or give yourself the gift of comics? Here's a list of where you can get some of the comics I've chronicled this year:

Jim Starlin's Dreadstar: The Beginning
This hardcover contains Metamorphosis Odyssey (fully colorized) and The Price graphic novel, plus the first Dreadstar graphic novel I've yet to get around to.

Artesia: The Book of Dooms
Volume one of the Artesia epic is out of print and pretty pricey in either hardcover or paperback on Amazon. In digital format, though, you can get a great deal: the first volume is under ten dollars on Drivethru Comics (a little bit more on Comixology) and you can get the whole series plus the rpg in a bundle on drivethru for a steal at $24.

Prophet
I haven't done an issue-by-issue review of Prophet (yet), but I've sang its praises on more than one occasion. Their are 3 volumes currently available and I belief a fourth will take it to the end of the first series.

My Various Appendices N

Some G+ discussion last week reminded me that my D&D inspirations haven't remained constant over the time I've played. Not only have I discovered new media and new influences, but playing the game itself shaped what I found most inspirational. To but them all in a single list would suggest an equivalence across time that never really existed. Here's my stab at personal gaming archeology:

The Platinum Age

It's hard to remember my earliest inspirations completely, but I suspect they relied heavily on the small amount of fantasy I had been exposed to. Interestingly, D&D related material figured in from the beginning: my first AD&D character (the first version of D&D I ever played) was an elven fighter/magic-user who wielded the Sword of the Magus--like Landron, the hero of the D&D Endless Quest book, Mountain of Mirrors in 1982. In his adventures, he gained a pegasus mount and medusa's head, suggesting Clash of the Titans figured strongly in my cousin the DM's mind and probably my own. Beyond that, I suspect Bullfinch's Mythology, Sidney Lanier's The Boy's King Arthur (more for illustrations by N.C. Wyeth), and Steinbeck's The Acts of King Arthur loomed large. Even more important was probably Tolkein's work, The Chronicles of Prydain,  Hawk the Slayer, and the TV fantasy Wizards & Warriors.

The Golden Age

By 5th grade, I had moved into DMing Basic D&D. By this point, Sword & Sorcery played a bigger role, mostly as filtered through comics like Warlord and Savage Sword of Conan, and barbarians films like Conan the Barbarian. The pulp stories that inspired those sorts of comics followed. The first setting I created in junior high was written up in a style similar to the Greyhawk boxset but clearly following the Hyborian Age model as particularly outlined in The Official Handbook of the Conan Universe. Country names borrowed from Howard appear (Argos, Shem, The Black Coast), mixed with a dinosaur and volcano-filled savage land similar to the one inhabited by Ka-Zar. The center of play was a sprawling, decadent city--essentially Lankhmar by another name.

The Silver Age
High school saw a break in playing D&D. My group moved on to other games: various superhero games, Shadowrun, a little bit of Rifts. Our D&D campaign shifted to GURPS where the inspirations were much as they were before, though real history began to influence me more, as did the gritty look of the Warhammer Fantasy rpg. Then, their was a break for college, where I played not a single fantasy rpg.

Joining an old high school friend's gaming group in 1995 after college, I was under the sway of the resurgence of epic fantasy--a subgenre I had mostly avoided before, besides Tolkein. Tad Williams Memory, Sorrow & Thorn was all over the world my friend and I co-created, though there was also a bit of Jordan's Wheel of Time, and more than a little of the Known World Gazetteers.

Restoration
By the time that campaign indeed, it was 1996 and my gaming took another long break for medical school and a couple of years of residency, allowing me to skip third edition in all its iterations. While my return to gaming predates this blog by a few years, the archive here is as good a chronicle as any of where my head has been since.

Hang out in the Dunes

The first release of the Hydra Collective (one hopes the first of many) and the first Kickstarter I ever back to deliver on time: Slumbering Ursine Dunes is now available for you non-backers on drivethrurpg (and rpgnow) in pdf.

Hopefully they'll be some unbiased reviews coming soon, but you can take me word for it: I've read it three times now and that familiarity has not dimmed the enjoyment I get from reading it. Most modules are kind of dry, but dry this most certainly is not. Though it's a good read, it doesn't give the impression it was meant it was meant only to be read. On the contrary, it's meant to played--to be explored. More than that, while it's got a unified backstory, it's written modularly so that it practically begs to be kit-bashed for your own setting.

Get your own copy today!

Wednesday Comics: Science Fiction

Last week saw the release of two new science fiction comics worth checking out.

Prophet Strikefile

Prophet Strikefile #2 continues a look at the world of Btandon Graham's far future sci-fi remake of Extreme Studios' Prophet. If you liked the ongoing series, you'll like this. Here's a sample:

ODY-C 

ODY-C #1 is a sort of a psychedelic space opera retelling of The Odyssey with all of the male characters switched to female. It reminds me a bit of Lob and Pichard's previous sci-fi retelling Ulysses, which I do think is just the same sort material.  The jaded gods seem similar and there is an element of fetish-wear in some of the costume designs. It also reminds me a bit of Barbarella, which seems to have been Fraction's intention.

The Strange & Pretentious Wizards of Troglopolis

The wizards of Troglopolis, that underground city of the Land of Azurth, are a strange lot indeed--and that is taking into account the general peculiarity of all sorts of arcanists in the realms above! While the deleterious effect of the practice of the magical arts on the mind and body is an often cited complication to their mastery, the particular afflictions of the Troglopolitan wizards form a unique cautionary tale.

The other people of Troglopolis call them "thaumaturgists," but they call themselves "artists." As such, they consider themselves separate from the mass of under-humanity; they disdain all those who do not share their gifts and (though they sometimes affect a great show of fraternity) resent all others that do. They dress in outrageous ways, take on dramatic pseudonyms, and generally conduct themselves as to appear mysterious or otherworldly. The most successful among them (like the Inconnu in the Velvet Mask or Lady Phosphor or the Laughing Shrouds) may go through the streets with phantasmagoric retinues (usually just illusionary--but not always) or might ride upon kaleidoscopic clouds of smoke. All this theater serves to disguise their general scrawniness and ill-health owing to their dissipated lifestyles.

The Troglopolitan thaumaturgists eschew the more practical applications of the arcane arts in war or commerce, instead focusing on more aesthetic uses. They work in illusions and minor enchantments put to a theatric or artistic purpose. These are ideally done at the behest of wealthy patrons, but may also be displayed to the public in the hopes of enhancing the thaumaturge's reputation. Some of the more of eccentric (and often the more despised by their fellows) thamaturgists work exclusively in public displays typically done without official sanction.

Despite their pretensions, surface wizards sometimes seek out the tutelage of the Troglopolitan thaumaturgists. In the magical arts they practice, few are as skilled. The only caveat is that one must tread lightly with their egos.

5e DMG First Impressions

I just picked up the Dungeon Master's Guide from the local gaming store last night (paying twice as much as I would have paid on Amazon, but the twin desires to support local business and have it right then won out), so I have had a chance to get into it any any detail, but on an initial flip-through, a few things are apparent:

• The contents are nice in the abstract, but their development isn't quite what I would have liked in several places. It's all well and good to say you can give XP for things other than killing monsters, but more robust guidelines would have been nice. Likewise with new race creation, since the races in the PHB seem to be built with some ideas of balance in mind, more specific guidelines would have been nice. I don't need a book to tell me I can make up stuff beyond what's in the book--but I'm probably not the audience for that sort of advice.
• In contrast to the race creation "rules," the monster creation stuff seems to be well done and reasonably detailed without going overboard.
• I like the sections on playing D&D in different genres of fantasy, but neither the genres nor the audience is served by having all of the examples be from D&D tie-in novels. I'm not against including those for commercial reasons, but having those be the only ones given seems a bit crass.
• I like the number of variety of variant rules, though I don't know that I'll use any of them.

An Assortment of Faeries & Spirits

The Denham Tracts (1846-1859) on folklore contain a list of fairies and other creatures of the North of England. The list is supposedly based on alist given in Reginald Scot's Discoverie of Witchcraft (1584) but is much expanded (in some cases, by duplication). In fact, the Tract contains beings not otherwise attested, suggesting Denham may have invented them.

Of course, that's not particular bar to their use in-game. Here's the complete list to start statting from:

"ghosts, boggles, Bloody Bones, spirits, demons, ignis fatui, brownies, bugbears, black dogs, spectres, shellycoats, scarecrows, witches, wizards, barguests, Robin-Goodfellows, hags, night-bats, scrags, breaknecks, fantasms, hobgoblins, hobhoulards, boggy-boes, dobbies, hob-thrusts, fetches, kelpies, warlocks, mock-beggars, mum-pokers, Jemmy-burties, urchins, satyrs, pans, fauns, sirens, tritons, centaurs, calcars, nymphs, imps, incubuses, spoorns, men-in-the-oak, hell-wains, fire-drakes, kit-a-can-sticks, Tom-tumblers, melch-dicks, larrs, kitty-witches, hobby-lanthorns, Dick-a-Tuesdays, Elf-fires, Gyl-burnt-tales, knockers, elves, rawheads, Meg-with-the-wads, old-shocks, ouphs, pad-foots, pixies, pictrees, giants, dwarfs, Tom-pokers, tutgots, snapdragons, sprets, spunks, conjurers, thurses, spurns, tantarrabobs, swaithes, tints, tod-lowries, Jack-in-the-Wads, mormos, changelings, redcaps, yeth-hounds, colt-pixies, Tom-thumbs, black-bugs, boggarts, scar-bugs, shag-foals, hodge-pochers, hob-thrushes, bugs, bull-beggars, bygorns, bolls, caddies, bomen, brags, wraiths, waffs, flay-boggarts, fiends, gallytrots, imps, gytrashes, patches, hob-and-lanthorns, gringes, boguests, bonelesses, Peg-powlers, pucks, fays, kidnappers, gallybeggars, hudskins, nickers, madcaps, trolls, robinets, friars' lanthorns, silkies, cauld-lads, death-hearses, goblins, hob-headlesses, bugaboos, kows, or cowes, nickies, nacks, waiths, miffies, buckies, ghouls, sylphs, guests, swarths, freiths, freits, gy-carlins, pigmies, chittifaces, nixies, Jinny-burnt-tails, dudmen, hell-hounds, dopple-gangers, boggleboes, bogies, redmen, portunes, grants, hobbits, hobgoblins, brown-men, cowies, dunnies, wirrikows, alholdes, mannikins, follets, korreds, lubberkins, cluricauns, kobolds, leprechauns, kors, mares, korreds, puckles, korigans, sylvans, succubuses, blackmen, shadows, banshees, lian-hanshees, clabbernappers, Gabriel-hounds, mawkins, doubles, corpse lights or candles, scrats, mahounds, trows, gnomes, sprites, fates, fiends, sibyls, nicknevins, whitewomen, fairies, thrummy-caps, cutties, and nisses, and apparitions of every shape..."