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An index of posts describing the Forgotten Smugglers' Cave, an adventure for Holmes Basic characters levels 2-4.                    ...

Thursday, March 14, 2024

Erol Otus cover illustration for Playing at the World 2E


Yesterday on FB, artist Erol Otus shared his original, unadorned illustration for the cover of the first volume of the revised of second edition of Playing at the World by Jon Peterson, due out this July. Per Erol's post, the illustration is meant to call "to mind monochromatic publications from the earlier days like “The Strategic Review” and Fanzines". 

Given the blue color, might I add the Holmes Basic rulebook to that list?

See my previous post for more info about the revised edition, which can be pre-ordered from Amazon here:

Playing at the World, 2nd Edition, Volume 1: The Invention of D&D

Monday, March 11, 2024

Playing at the World revised edition out in July

With a cover by Erol Otus!



Cover by Erol Otus...!


Playing at the World, Jon Peterson's 2012 groundbreaking history of the origin of RPGs, has been out of print for a number of years, with secondhand copies going for increasingly higher prices, but as I reported previously a revised second edition is coming later this year from MIT Press

The expanded book will now be split into two volumes, with the first one, Volume 1: The Invention of Dungeons & Dragons, coming out on July 30th of this year. Per the publisher info, this volume "distills the story of how the wargaming clubs and fanzines circulating around the upper Midwest in the 1970s culminated in Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson’s seminal role-playing game, D&D". 

The MIT Press and Amazon pre-order pages have now been updated with the cover art: a fantastic illustration by the legendary old school TSR artist Erol Otus (shown above)*. The first volume is now available for pre-order from Amazon for $29.95, and with a price guarantee:

Playing at the World, 2nd Edition, Volume 1: The Invention of D&D

I've pre-ordered it myself.

It will be followed later by Volume 2: The Three Pillars of Role-Playing Games, "a deeper dive into the history of the setting, system, and character of D&D". This appears to correspond to chapters 2-4 of the original edition, which were: 2: Setting - The Medieval Fantasy Genre; 3: System - The Rules of the Game; and 4: Character - Roles and Immersion. 

*Thanks for captainjapan on the OD&D74 forums for this news.

Wednesday, March 6, 2024

Scrum Con Preview Video by Little Wars TV


Just over three weeks until Scrum Con 2024!

Tony Marano of Little Wars TV has made a great preview video for us, with lots of footage from last year; it's a great way to get a feel for what the con is like.

See my earlier post for more info about the con (dates, location, etc). Badges can be purchased here on Tabletop Events.

Tickets sales have been healthy, but there are still plenty of seats left in great games, both RPGs & miniatures wargames. See the event schedule here (protip: set the "items per page" to 100 to scroll through the whole game list without paging back and forth).

If you liked my post last fall about playing in a Fury Road game, you can play in that game on Friday morning at 10 - there are still seats left.

See you there!

Saturday, March 2, 2024

GM's Day Sale at DMs Guild




DMs Guild and DrivethruRPG are running a GM's Day sale, with products up to 40% off.

This means that The Ruined Tower of Zenopus is on sale for $1.19 through March 10th.


Get it here:


Most of the classic TSR titles are included in the sale. For example, the Rules Cyclopedia print print and pdf is $26 instead of $35. Find it here:





Thursday, February 29, 2024

Leap Day: Giant Zenopus (New Monster)

 

 
Xenopus laevis from Amphibia and Reptiles by Hans Gadow (1901).
Source: Wikimedia Commons 


Giant Zenopus

Move: 30 feet/turn land; 180 feet/turn swimming
Hit Dice: 4
Armor Class: 5
Treasure Type: incidental
Alignment: neutral
Attacks: 1 rake with hindclaws
Damage: 2d4

The giant zenopus, an entirely aquatic frog, can grow to enormous proportions given a sufficiently nutritious diet, with specimens up to ten feet long having been reported. A ravenous scavenger, it will eat anything, locating and shoveling food into its tongueless mouth with strangely sensitive and prehensile hands. A strong swimmer, the zenopus is known to float motionless with its unblinking eyes just above the water, waiting for the opportunity to leap and grab its prey, raking with the large claws on its hindfeet as it pulls them under.

For defense, the skin of the zenopus exudes a slime that makes them extremely slippery (AC 5). Even worse, the slime of 1 in 10 frogs carries a parasitic aquatic chytrid fungus, and anyone scratched by the claws of such a frog must Save vs Poison or have their skin become infected. After 1 week, infection will cause loss of 1d4 hp per day due to the sloughing of skin, unless a Cure Disease or an anti-fungal poultice (consult a herbalist) is administered.

The eggs of the giant zenopus are prized by wizards for use in magical research due to their size (6" diameter), fetching 1,000 GP in larger cities. The eggs must be kept wet at all times or will perish. There are rumors that there are secret alchemical methods of cloning the eggs, and even darker tales speak of ways of transforming the egg into a frog that walks upright like a man.

The only other treasure that might be found is incidental to their behavior; i.e., that which was possessed by their prey.

Notes:
---Based on the real world Xenopus, a frog long used in biological research, and which was presumably J. Eric Holmes' inspiration for the name of Zenopus. The name "Xenopus" means "strange foot" in Greek. The 94th anniversary of Holmes' birth was just a few weeks ago, on February 16th (Holmes Day).

---The concept of breeding frogmen from giant frogs goes back to Dave Arneson's Temple of the Frog adventure found in the Blackmoor OD&D supplement

"He has genetically modified the killer frogs to begin breeding frogmen..." --- the Temple of the Frog by Dave Arneson

And of course frogmen tie-in nicely to Holmes' Dagonites, who as described are more froggy than than fishy. 

"...surely your recent encounter with the frog-man should have convinced you of the reality of the Dagonites"  --- Murray the Mage, The Maze of Peril

---I originally drafted this in 2019 in comments to a post made to the late lamented Holmes Basic G+ group, just before G+ was shut down. While I transferred most of the posts from that group to an archive blog, this one didn't make it for unknown reasons. But I found it in an XML file I had downloaded and recovered the comments and revised them into this post.

Happy Leap Day!

See also:

Tuesday, February 27, 2024

Chance & Circumstance blog:

On locating a copy of the 1973 Draft of D&D


Cover of the 1973 draft shared previously on Playing at the World

As posted here previously, the forthcoming book The Making of Original Dungeons & Dragons (which can be pre-ordered here) is set to include a copy of the 1973 draft of original D&D, also known informally as Guidon D&D. 

However, in the meantime researcher Michael Calleia has independently discovered a copy of this draft among the court records of the 1979 Arneson vs. Gygax lawsuit. Head over to his blog, Chance & Circumstance, to read more about this find:

Unveiling the Past: A Journey Through the July 1973 Draft and D&D’s Foundational Saga

Stay tuned for more from Michael, as he promises a series looking at the draft.

See also:

A Draft of OD&D (earlier post here)

For discussion of the draft see:

OD&D Discussion thread (requires membership to view)

EnWorld Discussion thread


Tuesday, February 20, 2024

Scrum Con 2024 (March 29-30)

Badge Registration now open!


 

Attention DC metro area gamers:

Scrum Con is back for another year of games!

This year, for the first time, it will take place over two days, Friday March 29th and Saturday March 30th. The location is the same as last year (and 2020), in the Civic Building in Silver Spring, Maryland.

General registration opens today, Monday February 20th, at Tabletop Events:


Get your Scrum Con 2024 Badge Here


The standard price this year is $55 for a regular two-day pass, $25 for a Friday-only pass or $35 for a Saturday-only pass. But register right now (until this Thursday, Feb 22nd) and there is an early bird discount of $5 off per day. There is also an $80 VIP option that includes a two-day pass, a t-shirt and swag bag.

As in previous years, Scrum Con strives to offer an even mix of tabletop RPGs and miniatures wargaming. The schedule of games can be perused here:


Scrum Con 2024 schedule of games


In general, there are two slots of games each day, running from 10 AM - 2 PM and 3:30 - 7:30 PM, although there are few games at other times. So you should easily be able to play in two games per day.

And as always, sign up with an email address on the mailing list at scrum-con.com to stay on top of the latest announcements and updates.

For an idea of what the games are like, see this post on the Scrum in Miniature blog with over 400 photos from the 2023 event

Hope to see you there!

And please help us get the word out by sharing this with anyone who may be interested.