Tuesday, February 18, 2020
Holmes Day 2020
I didn't have time to post over the weekend, but Sunday was the 90th anniversary of the birth of J. Eric Holmes on Feb 16th, 1930. In previous years, I've bumped a Holmes Basic Testimonial post, but the comment section for that is getting long, so here's a new post.
For me, some of the Holmes Basic-related highlights of the past year were:
Returning to Gary Con for the second time and running In Search of the Brazen Head of Zenopus twice, and among many other highlights, playing in Carl Heyl's all-day drop-in Discos & Dragons game where I met his version of Zenopus.
Following the demise of the great G+, compiling the Holmes Basic G+ Community Archive, a collection in blog format of 7 years of posts to the community.
Running a kids' game, the Master's Lair (hope to turn this into a dungeon to share).
Returning to North Texas RPG Con for the third time and playing in Steve Muchow's sequel Zenopus dungeon; playing in Chris Holmes' game; and making a guest appearance as Zenopus himself in another session of Carl's Discos & Dragons game.
Writing up d12 Hauntings for the Zenopus Dungeon.
Continuing my long-running annual kids' game, this time with N1 Against the Cult of the Reptile God.
Being a guest on the Save or Die podcast for the second time, in Episode #154: Holmes Basic.
Writing about Holmes' 1946 Letter to a Pulp Magazine.
Facilitating the re-publication of Holmes' 1983 review of Call of Cthulhu RPG in the second issue of Jared Smith's Bayt al Azif zine.
Running the original Zenopus dungeon for the Scrum Club at a special session the weekend following Thanksgiving. Rich McKee transcribed the events of the game, which I apparently forgot to post here but appears on the Third Point of Singularity.
Releasing the Ruined Tower of Zenopus on DMs Guild, a 5E D&D Conversion of the original Zenopus Dungeon
And a special shout-out to Thom Hall for running my Beyond the Door to Monster Mountain at DunDraCon 44 this past Saturday, as he has previous years (2017, 2018):
And I'm looking forward to the following in the next few months:
Helping to put on Scrum Con 2020 with the Second Saturday Scrum Club in less than two weeks (Feb 29th), and running a session of the aforementioned Brazen Head game.
Appearing on the Wandering DMs live video chat on Sunday, March 1st at 1 PM EST.
Returning to Gary Con XII at the end of March and for the first time running two different scenarios at a con, the Brazen Head and a new scenario, Expedition to Skull Stack Crater.
All very cool. Ran my family (wife and two kids) through the Tower of Zenopus (session 4) on 2/16, though I didn't realize it was JEH's birthday. Gave my boy a rundown of the D&D's development/edition history last night, including Holmes' place in that history.
ReplyDeleteKeep the legacy alive, man.
: )
Fantastic coincidence! Glad to hear you are continuing with the adventure.
DeleteVery much hoping to get into your "Expedition to Skull Stack Crater" at Gary Con!
ReplyDeleteGreat! You are guaranteed a spot. ; )
DeleteI guess I live under a rock, but didn't know you attended so many conventions. If they weren't all so far away, I'd be rather interested myself.
ReplyDeleteStill, cheers to keeping the holmesian jaunt alive.
It's just something I started doing in the past few years. My first NTX RPG Con was in 2016, Gary Con in 2017. Started going to local cons/game days around the same time as well. Hope you make it over sometime!
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