Mountaintop Chalet of the Frost Giant Czar

ANTIGENCON, GenCon's online evil twin, is going on right now on G+ and as a part of that Jeff Call ran Mountaintop Chalet of the Frost Giant Czar. Jason Sholtis, Michael Gibbons, Chris P. and I played secret agents of the Lawful Church (the Radio Church of Pelor) sent in the rescue a missing bishop.

It was all very James Bond (in the 1967 Casino Royale sense). We pretended to be a wealthy foreigner (Sheik El-Ruptor) and his entourage to gain entrance then proceeded to find our contact and the bishop. We alas did not discover the Czar's evil scheme, but we did set the chalet on fire with dynamite and escape via a ski-lift handcranked by one of our team with a Girdle of Giant Strength and a Haste spell caste on him.

The Czar escaped to no doubt menace parties in the future!

Mortzengersturm--Back from the Con and Back on Sale

Chris is unmoved by your attempts to haggle

We got back from the NTrpgcon last night. It was a good time as usual, playing some good games, putting some faces to some names of cool folks I know online, and getting to bang out with the Hydra partners and the usual suspects.

The Con ended on sort of a sucky note, though, as I left my swag bag at the hotel bar and it disappeared by morning. I lost my copy of Jason Sholtis's Eyebite, Gamesmen of Kasar, some Iron Crown supplement--and most unfortunately the remainder of the Mortzengersturm stock I had brought to the con. Luckily, I left some at home, but I now don't have as many to sell as I might have.

So, anyway, Mortzengersturm sales are open again, but supplies remain limited!

NTRPGCon and A Random Bit of Art

Commodore Cog art by Jeff Call, colors by me

NTrpgcon kicked off (for me anyway) yesterday. The Hydra Co-op booth is up and running, so if you're at the convention, come on by. The Hydra group plus some other guys played a game of Boot Hill last night, gamemastered by Chris Kutalik. It was my first time with Boot Hill and it was pretty fun, particularly with every body doing their best "Western accent."

Today, I've got Billy Longino's Halfling police procedural Southfarthing Confidential and tomorrow its my Mortzengersturm game.

Mortzengersturm...EXPOSED!

Once again, I'll be running a session of Mortzengersturm, The Mad Manticore of the Prismatic Peak at North Texas RPG Con in Jone, which (assuming everything goes well with the printer) will also be the debut of the print edition of the adventure at the Hydra Co-op booth!

Here are ten things about the Mortzengersturm adventure even a dedicated reader of this blog might not know:

1. The adventure grew out of an adaptation of Jason Sholtis's Zogorion, Lord of the Hippogriffs for my Land of Azurth game, originally played on June 15 and July 19, 2015.
2. The name Mortzengersturm was arrived at by smashing together the titles of Poe's "Metzengerstein" and Hugh Cave's "Murgunstrumm." Neither story have I read (though I did see a film adaptation of the Poe story).
3. This John R. Neill drawing was the initial inspiration for the look of Mortzengersturm, and possibly the source of the idea that he would be a manticore:

4. The goblins' song in the published version of the adventure should be sang to the tune of "God Save the Tsar!" the former national anthem of the Russian Empire.
5. Slime-spawned goblins was an idea I had back in 2012. I finally got to use in print, in a modified form.
6. Thedabara is, of course, named for the silent film vamp Theda Bara (1885-1955).
7. The Oubliette of Mistakes wasn't in the adventure as originally run and basically got included because I had thought up The Moonster and needed a place to put him. The name was likely inspired by the Island of Misfit Toys from Rankin-Bass' Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer (1964).
8. There are a few references to Chicago's Columbia World Exposition of 1893 in the adventure which no party has yet investigated.
9. A brand of cigarettes from the City and Weird Adventures makes a cameo.
10. The parrot-bear (and the whole idea of Mortzengersturm's mixed up animals) came from an illustration by Jeff Call--who later wound up illustrating the adventure.

A Blurry Picture of my Haul of Dubious Treasures from GaryCon

What we've got here is: Journey to the Cloud Castle, All The Worlds' Monsters Vol. 2, DM's Book of Nasty Tricks Misfits and Magic, The Hole Delver's Catalog, Dragons of Weng T'Sen, Amazon Mutual Wants You! Vol. 1, and The Trouble with Friends.

Why these particular items? It would be ahrd to say, though some of them had the requisite amount of old school kitsch or nostalgia from seeing ads in Dragon. I did buy a couple of newer things but this was the weird stuff.

I Was Going to Stat These Guys for 5e...

...but I was too tired after getting home from NTrpgcon, so "Toast" and "Toast, Burnt" will have to wait. I did not get the Field Guide to Encounters (where those two "monsters" come from), but I did get this other old Judge's Guild stuff from the con: Shield Maidens of Sea Rune and Operation Ogre. The former is part of the Wilderlands, the latter has a fairytalish cover and a modernish title and content that doesn't really match either. In fact, Siembieda draws a completely different sort of ogre on the cover than the interior. I also picked up what a think is the last of the Talislanta books I didn't have, Thystram's Collectanea, and the Role-Aids supplement, Undead.

I demured from Chaosium's Thieves' World Companion and some Japanese D&D modules, mostly due to price--beyond the quite reasonable objection that I wouldn't use them. Not a bad haul, though.

Mortzengersturm at NTrpgcon

Saturday morning I ran a playtest of Mortzengersturm, the Mad Manticore of the Prismatic Peak. It went well, with the player's really diving in and giving the pregens some really funny characterization. And in the case of Billy Longino's Zabra Kadabra, illustration:

Zabra stole Mort's magic items!

Dennis Higgins described Azurth in his first exposure as "Disney meets Adventure Time!" (presumably with the man-eating manticores being a given. Justin "A Field Guide to Doomsday" Davis said he kept imagining it all as a Rankin-Bass stop motion feature. Justin's lips to God's ears!

Kreg Mosier, fellow Hydra Collective member Humza "Legacy of Bieth" Kazmi, and my wife Andrea (who's played this adventure 3 times now1) rounded out the group. It was a good time.

NTrpgcon Day One

James Aulds had this shirt made from my design and it is awesome

North Texas rpg con had an auspicious start for the Hydra Collective with our very first official con booth. All our stuff was selling well as were Jason Sholtis's adventure zines (the exclusive disappeared before I even arrived) and artwork by Jason and Dave Johnson. Positive things were said about Strange Stars by at least one old school luminary, which was gratifying.

Yesterday evening, my wife Andrea and I and a few other Gplussers, including Mike Davison, played in Jason's Operation: Unfathomable game (Andrea's pull quote: "truly unfathomable" (in a good way)). My pregen was a timelost Buck Rogers/Rocketeer type named "Smash" Hannigan so I got to subject the group to my attempt at a rapid-fire, mid-Atlantic accent. It's the little pleasures, you know?

Today, time to hit the dealers room and spend money on things I don't need by must have. I'll be manning the booth this afternoon, so if you're at the con and I haven't met you yet, stop by!

Azurth NPC Card

Over the weekend, I got to thinking using Jeff Call's great character portraits only on the record sheets for the pregens wouldn't allow enough folks to see them all, so I decided to do a giveaway for the Hydra booth: 3x5 NPC cards statted for 5e. Shouldn't be too hard to get those printed up.

Here's a sample of the front and back of one:

Meet Ina Quick

North Texas Rpg Con gaming registration opened last night and my session is nearly full. I showed off the character sheet of Sir Clangor, one of the pregens for game previously. Here's another (minus complete equipment): the rogue, Ina Quick.

A Sampling of the Hydra Sampler

The Hydra Cooperative is proud to be supporting ConTessa and Gen Con. As part of that port we're in the process of putting together a sampler of Hydra products and upcoming products. Above is our tenative cover and here's the Strange Stars OSR page I put together for the sampler:

Sir Clangor's Character Sheet

Last week, showed off a couple of portraits for the pregens for my Mortzengersturm, the Mad Manticore of the Prismatic Peak game at NTRPGCon. Here's the character sheet for the first one--at least the front side:

Azurth in North Texas

I'll be running a session of Mortzengersturm, The Mad Manticore of the Prismatic Peak at North Texas RPG Con in June. This will be the first time I've run the adventure as written (the game session it was based on was a bit different). I'll be using pregens like character portraits (hopefully) done by Jeff Call whose doing the interior art for the module. Anyway, here's the pitch:

Game Title : Mortzengersturm, the Mad Manticore of the Prismatic Peak
Game System : D&D 5e
Number of players : 4-6
Pregens/Level of characters : yes / 3rd-5th

Game Info : After turning himself into a manticore, the self-styled wizard-artiste Mortzengersturm moved to the crystalline peak of Mount Geegaw to practice his transformation magic without interference. You've been hired to snatch his most prized artifact, the Whim-Wham Stone--or at least some of its eldritch light. A menagerie of magical hybrids, a self-absorbed vampire, more than a few hippogriffs, and of course, the mad manticore himself, await.

I'm not the only Hydra Co-op member running a game at the Con. Chris Kutalik is doing Misty Isles of the Eld on Friday. Hydra will also have a booth to move our wares and give away some swag.

It's been a great con the past two years, and I'm looking forward to it this year.

The Con Ends

I'm flying home today after a good time at NTrpgcon 2015. Had dinner with Justin of A Field Guide to Doomsday, and met the next generation of mutant chronicler. All the heads of Hydra (except Anothony) came together for some strategic planning about our upcoming endeavors. Chris Kutalik ran us through the Reavers of the Weird mini-game (made even more mini and cutthroat by a small selection of miniatures). I played a goatman bounty hunter named Valentine in a ASE-inspired, space station-crawl, Chris was a psyker cat named Miss Sassy, and my girlfriend, Andrea, played a bovinoid starship deck crew member with an Intelligence of 8. Hijinks ensued.

Saturday, the Hydra crew was together again as part of a indie rpg press panel put together by Richard LeBlanc (New Big Dragon Games Unlimited) and featuring a host of knowledgeable small press dudes.

And of course, there was some beer consumption and a good deal of far-ranging discussion along the way. If only the professional conventions I attend were as much fun.

NTRPGCon

I'm in Texas for the  North Texas Rpg Con once again, this time for a summit of the Hydra Publishing Collective as well as the usual gaming an debachery. I met up with the usual suspects last night: Chris Kutalik, Robert Parker, and Justin Davis, and met Mike Davison for the first time. I'm looking forward to meeting Jason Sholtis.

Oh, and I picked this up yesterday:

Some of us are in an indie publishing panel on Saturday morning which they closed registration up prematurely, so if you're at the con and can rouse yourself at 0800, you should come by regardless.

NTRPGCON After Report

The curtain falls on NTRPGCON today and it's all airports and getting ready for the work week. Though it lacks the scale, I think I enjoyed this convention better than my trip to GenCon a couple of years ago. Part of that was getting to meet (and consume alcohol with) blogger/Google+ compatriots like Chris Kutalik, Robert Parker, James Aulds, and Brad Ncube, and renew my acquaintance with Justin Davis. I also found that I am not wholly immune to the thrill of getting to meet the celebrity of luminaries of gaming history: it was a kick to listen to Jim Ward spin tales of the TSR of yore, and to hear Chris Holmes reminiscences about his father's gaming and writing.

Of course the gaming was great, too. I played in Tim Snider's SyFy channel creature feature-esque Cryptworld session, and got to try Jeff Dee's Bethorm (my first actual Tekumel game, despite years of loving the setting) with the author himself gm-ing.

All in all, it was a good reminder that G+ Hangout games are great, but there is something to be said about being present in the same

Gone to Texas

Not actually a hill giant, but Robert Parker

As Wikipedia will helpful tell you: "Gone to Texas (often abbreviated GTT), was a phrase used by Americans immigrating to Texas in the 19th century often to escape debt incurred during the Panic of 1819. Moving to Texas, which at the time was part of Mexico, was particularly popular among debtors from the South and West."

In this case, however, I'm just at the NTRPGCON with the likes of Justin "A Field Guide to Doomsday" Davis, Robert "Rogues and Reavers" Parker, Chris "The Hill Cantons" Kutalik and a bunch of other ne'er-do-wells.

Game, Interrupted

Our Weird Adventures game got postponed last night, so we’ll have to wait another week to find out what happens in Westerly Mansion. 

Here’s a little background I sent the players earlier this week to tide you over:

"MANIAC CAPTURED! ELDRITCH VALLEY SLEEPS SAFELY AGAIN" (26 Swelter, 5887)
Tranquility has been restored to the usually quiet communities of the Eldritch Valley.  Fennix Orgo, the so-called 'Shrike' killer, has been apprehended by law enforcement and returned to the Blufton Sanitarium, where he is to spend the rest of his days.  Orgo was responsible for at least seven deaths by brutal, bestial means, including the murder of J. Wyllard by impalement--a grisly deed which earned him his nickname.

[from The City Inquirer - a little over one year ago]


I’m off to Gen Con today.  Maybe I’ll see some of you there!

SDCC 2011: The Curtain Falls

This is my buddy Brandon in the shot he orchestrated to commemorate his Comic Con experience.  It wasn't easy to get--mainly because the ladies got a lot of attention and were difficult to get to.

I managed to make it over to the few gaming related booths (Chessex and Steve Jackson Games for rpgs).  There was also a "Cthulhu Library" booth right next to SJG which had Lovecraftian merchandise of all sorts, including games.  I picked up Kenneth Hite's Bookhounds of London, and let myself get talked into a purchase of Delta Green: Targets of Opportunity on the grounds that the hardcover limited edition is hard to come by.  This delving into Yog-Sothothery led to the stunning revelation that Brandon had never heard of Cthulhu or HPL!

Needing to patch this gap in his geek education, I encouraged Brandon to buy one of Penguin's Lovecraft collections.  Later this afforded me the opportunity to mock him, by dramatizing his discovering HPL for the first time.  He took a picture of it:

Our luck with panels wasn't very good (all the ones we wanted to attend were had too long lines), but we did get into the Immortal panel by inadvertently breaking in line.  After hearing Tarsem Singh talk about his artistic goals, and seeing more footage from the film.  I'm a bit more interested in this than I was before.

That's the Con highlights.  It was interesting comparing this year to last.  The crowds seemed less on Thursday and Friday than the previous year, and the convention floor seemed less busy, whereas the panels seemed moreso. One thing that doesn't change is that it remains quite a spectacle.  Where else can you see four slave-girl Leias crossing the street in a loose approximation of the Beatles on Abbey Road?  Alas, I was too slow to photograph that bit of quintessential con, so you'll just have to take my word for it.

Comic Con-fidential

I'm in San Deigo for Comic Con International, and again this year, the first bit of excitement centers around getting my pass.  This time, I get a text from a man who identifies himself as "Aric" who wants me to meet him in the lobby of a hotel in the gaslamp district.  After I final locate the hotel in question (which was much harder than it should have been owing to hotels and streets with almost identical names) Aric passes on the badges for myself and my friend Brandon (who always arranges these exchanges that somehow get left to me to carry out) marking us as "Professional Guests" (which amuses me to think we've somehow elevated the art of "guesting" to a degree as to actually be professional at it) and our oversized and gaudy souvenir bags that are the mark of SDCC attendance.

I thank Aric and make my way over to the covention through the crowds--and in the shadow of a giant inflatable Smurf.  Beyond that, the overwhelming message of the San Deigo streets is that I shoud play this Arkham City game because billboards are everywhere, including on the backs of moving vehicles.

Anyway, inside the convention center its the usual mixture of fairies, steampunks, and cardboard Daleks--though my impression so far is that there are fewer costumes than last year.  Ignoring the cosplay, I buy myself an $8 personal pizza and $4 bottled water and set out to do some shopping.  Several major genre book publishers are there, but they mostly disappoint me by serving up a plate of Star Wars or video game tie-in novels or fantasy with smoldering covers hinting at romance undertones.

I do see that The Thackery T. Lambshead Cabinet of Curiosities is out, though I resist buying one at that momemt.  Also Grant Morrison's history of/meditation on comics Supergods: What Masked Vigilantes, Miraculous Mutants, and a Sun God from Smallville Can Teach Us About Being Human is out, so that I quickly download it to my Kindle.  I've only read a couple of chapters, but its great. Morrison's insights into the iconic comic characters are at once exactly what everybody says, but at the same time delivered in such a way as to seem fresh and insightful.  Maybe I'll do a fuller review at some point.

Back at the Con, Heavy Metal tempts me with the latest of Jodorowsky's and Mannara's Borgia and 2000AD woos me with a Nemesis the Warlock collection, but both lose me to the wonder of an almost 3 foot long shark swimming stately through the air above our heads, its tail moving sinuously as it goes.

I'm told these are called "Air Swimmers" amd will soon be available at a toy store near you.

After that I try to go to a Batman panel.  Too long a line.  I don't even try A Game of Thrones as its line already stretches into infinite.

Maybe I'll have more patience for standing in line on Day 2...