Blacktron II

The next set of LEGO villains were actually just Blacktron again; although they'd been revised and reskinned. Now they looked less sinister, and frankly much less villainous, which of course made them also more boring. To attempt to counter that, they came with a few nifty design cues; the globular cockpit was always a great idea, for example. For whatever reason, the line had a lot of sets in it, but many of them were very, very small. Most likely, a good number of them were originally sold in those little bags.

Anyway, let's get to it. The 1462 Galactic Scout was a great example of a generic tiny ship, while the 6812 Grid Trekker was a tiny land vehicle, most notable for having at least given the little Blacktron astronaut a jetpack to fly around with.

Slightly larger, yet still small, spaceships included 1479 2-Pilot Craft, 1887 Scout Patrol Ship, and 6832 Super Nova II. 6851, the Tri-Wheeled Tyrax was also a tiny little land vehicle.
Blacktron II also revisted some Blacktron I themes, like 6878 Sub Orbital Guardian, which was another walker type vehicle, and 6933, the Spectral Starguider, which was not unlike the Battrax vehicle. The 6887 Allied Avenger and 6981 Aerial Intruder are medium sized spaceships that feature the globe cockpit. Like Blacktron I, there is no really large spaceship.
In fact, the spaceship that came with 6988 Alpha Centauri Outpost was nearly as big as the Aerial Intruder on it's own, and the base was very similar to the Message Intercept Base from Blacktron I.
While not a set per se, there used to be a value pack where you could get three sets together, and they had instructions on how to build a vehicle using parts from all three sets. This 4741 Super Vehicle was a nifty gimmick, but not a very cool design in its own right. The elongated globe cockpit is perhaps its most memorable feature.

As before, here's a handful of home made Blacktron 2 constructions. The really massive spaceship is... well, it's really massive. And really cool. I still have no idea how he got that curved surface. The small flying saucer is a "reskin" it's actually a Spyrius design remade in Blacktron II colors. We'll get to Spyrius next, as they're the next major bad guy syndicate to come on the scene when Blacktron II were finally phased out.

Game fiction

I've reviewed a few D&D novels in the past, including a bunch of mediocre Eberron novels. A few of these books are OK, many are absolutely terrible.

However, I think the Black Library imprint, associated with Games Workshop, does a better job than most at putting out readable fantasy fiction based on their games. Enough so that they're collecting some of their earlier successful book series in Omnibus format. Although I didn't actually buy any of them (yet) I fast-tracked Matthias Thulman, Witch Hunter, Vampire Wars: The Von Carstein Trilogy, and The Vampire Genevieve as ones I probably want to buy.

I also saw some of the Del Rey Robert E. Howard collections that I don't have. Although I haven't yet read all of the ones I do have (the three Conan and the Kull volumes). They didn't have Solomon Kane, which I would really have liked, but they did have Howard's horror stories, which is probably my next choice anyway.

Part of the reason I didn't buy them is because my list of books that I already own but haven't yet read is already quite lengthy---easily 30-40 books long, and several of those are also omnibus collections with three novels in them. But, I have no doubt, I'll be unable to resist for long and will eventually give in and pick up at least one of those four listed above---one of the three Warhammer omnibuses, or the REH horror stories (or Solomon Kane) book. I guess that's five. I can't count this morning.

Any recommendations from amongst them?

Trailblazer and Pathfinder

Just a quick note: within the last week or so I've picked up pdfs of both Pathfinder (the new Paizo alt.D&D3.5) and Trailblazer (a modular "skin" to add on top of D&D3.5 that addresses many of the systemic problems that the game had exhibited over time.) Despite the formating differences (one being a complete game meant to stand alone, and one being a number of patches and fixes that is unusable without your 3.5 PHB) the similar names highlight similar design goals to both systems.

Both are also cheap, at least on pdf: Pathfinder is $10 and Trailblazer is $5. I couldn't tell you (yet) how well they work, and given that they're both significantly large pdf files, I probably won't read them cover to cover. However, I'll report some scattered findings from each other time.

As a guy who has little interest in dropping my 3.5/d20 game for a 4e game, I'm obviously quite interested in fixes to the game, especially ones that are inspired by a similar mindset to my own. For this reason, I anticipate that I'll enjoy the toolkit approach of Trailblazer more than the complete alternate approach of Pathfinder, but at the end of the day, I guess we'll see...

One thing that I'll say is that both books have absolutely great cover art. I included the Pathfinder one as a sample. Can't wait to see a good version of this without markups and titles on it. I wonder if I can find a way to extract it from the pdf?

Blacktron I

You may think that my blog has been converted into a LEGO® blog, but that's not true. I'm just termporarily really excited about them. Again. All of my hobbies tend to come and go in waves. LEGO is one that comes up less frequently than some (gaming being pretty much "always on" in comparison) but when it hits, it hits pretty hard. There's something about constructing your own world in tangible form via these standardized building bricks that just really appeals to the creative side of me. Plus, I like making the standardized models too, as an excercise in (easy) model-making.

Anyway, I'm going to do a small series of posts as a tribute to the various "bad guys" of LEGO Space, posting catalog images of all the sets in their lines, and then a handful of creations I find online that are really nifty. This means, of course, that I have to start with Blacktron. Blacktron are, as near as I can tell, the original bad guys of the entire Legoland universe, and they're still one of the most sinister and appealing in appearance. LEGO hasn't really topped them yet, which is a shame, although they've had some notable other successes too.

The first set I'm showing, 1875, is a bit of an anomaly, as it doesn't really highlight the classic Blacktron color scheme, and is perhaps a transitional set between Blacktron I and Blacktron II.

Anyway, Blacktron was also always noted for its interesting ground vehicles. The Alienator was a walker, no doubt inspired by the walkers that George Lucas had shown us just a few years earlier in The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi. The Battrax, on the other hand, was an ATV tank-like vehicle, with big, beefy wheels.

There wasn't really an extremely large space ship set; the Invader was nice, but rather smallish, and the larger Renegade was also at best only medium sized. The Renegade was also very notable for it's assymetric design.

The final official set was the Message Intercept Base, again with a title that hints at their nefarious goings-on.

Now, below are a few of the images I've found via Google Image Search of home-made LEGO creations of a Blacktron I theme. All of these are really cool, but I especially want to point out the final one, because it's a remake of another vehicle from another official set, redone in Blacktron I colors. The "prototype" of that set is actually in the new Space Police III line, where it's a criminal or pirate ship being chased by a police vehicle. Also, the third one down is very similar to a Blacktron II set... but you'll see that later when I get to Blacktron II.

LEGO evolution

Because I'm still temporarily jazzed about LEGOs and because the internet encourages this kind of junk, I've spent some time looking over LEGO sets over the years.

Now, I've never been a huge fan of the Town theme; y'know, the various sets that approximate stuff you'd see if you looked out of your window while driving around where you live. Real stuff that you see every day. I always liked the exotic and the futuristic. Made me a natural for the Space theme. But, because of its longevity and because of the consistency of source material which it emulates, it's a great example of what I hope to show.

Below are images scanned from catalogs, including the newer online catalog images, so the more recent are better quality pictures. But ignore the picture quality and pay attention to the detail of the sets themselves. I've included the year in which the set was first published. All of these are police stations; a standby of the LEGO Town theme; there's been a steady stream of police stations in print since at least 1972; long before the minifigure even came out.

Check out the evolution of these police sets! It's apparent to me that the LEGO designers have really improved over the years. Also, the addition of more specialized parts gives them the ability to better model real life. Also a focus on less stylized and more realistic size and form has been apparent over time as well.

However, before I spend too much time talking about the post-minifig sets, here's some interesting historical perspective; the earlier sets that preceded the advent of the minifigure. This first set, from 1972, is (as near as I can tell) the first LEGO police station ever released. I've included the 1973 catalog scan rather than the 1972, because it's slightly more zippy, and it's titled Police Heliport.

As merely an item of personal interest, the very first LEGO set that I believe we ever owned in my family was this little bugger from 1975: again; a police van. It has some early LEGO guys that were almost but not quite minifigures. Actually, they still had a long way to go.

The second actual police station previews the minifigure stations: it has a bunch of pre-minifig LEGO guys, and is the direct ancestor of the first "true" minifigure police station in 1979. The vintage for this set was 1976.
The first minifigure police station was from 1979. It was a decent set for its time. It utilizes a number of regular LEGO basic bricks (as was custom for the time) and few specialized parts, but was still an order of magnitude less crude than the 1976 effort. Heck; few specialized parts had yet been invented; the inventory of specialized pieces would skyrocket over the next few decades. If anything, the late 90s and 2000s seems to have been the era of proliferation of specialized parts.
In 1983, the Police Headquarters was replaced with the Police Station. This isn't really a change in crudity (or lack thereof) compared to 1983, except that the color scheme was slightly more coherent, the car at least had a top (although it still looks little like a real car) and some things changed just to mix things up and add variety. In 1986, the Police Station was replaced with the Police Command Base, which seems to be an improvement. A few Space theme pieces were incorporated into the design (notably the radar dish) and it included for the first time an "open" design with big windows with "glass" pieces. This is a preview of future designs to come. This set, unless I'm missing something in my survey (which is entirely possible) was in production for a long time; it wasn't replaced until 1993. I think this really encapsulates the theme better than prior efforts, in which police stations were little more than houses in black and white that had a car, a motorcycle and a helicopter parked on the roof. This one really felt like a police station.

1993's Central Precinct HQ took a lot of design cues from the older Police Command Base. Featuring again modern architecture, open windows, an actual helipad, and some other notable improvements over the first sets, this was an attractive police station. It also had a major improvement in the vehicle design; the helicopter doesn't look like a tiny little cobbled together design that doesn't even have any room for, say, an engine; it looks like a real helicopter. Kinda. The regular police car (still tiny and roofless) is also joined by not only a motorcycle, but also a 4x4 off road vehicle, so the police can get to those difficult to reach rock-climbing criminals or something. By 1996 the catalog scans lack the titles of the sets, so I can't tell you what this next one is called, but it's an interesting innovation (from now on, I'll just call them all Police Stations.) Similar to 1993's station, this one also has a little pier and a boat attached. The two vehicles are replaced with a single van-like vehicle... so you can now get your SWAT team out there or something, but you're better off not trying to pull over anyone driving very fast. That's what the two motorcycles are for. Interestingly enough, the catalog scan indicates that prisoners can attempt to escape through a hatch at the police boathouse. But they may not want to, since the set also comes with a shark, no doubt hanging around waiting to gobble up any prisoners who make the attempt. By 2003---the next year a police station came out, if I'm correct, catalog images had been vastly improved, no doubt due to the ability of the catalog layout artists to use Photoshop to add backgrounds and other cool things to the set. This police station comes from the World City subtheme; a shortlived attempt to combine European and North American design cues with a slightly futuristic bent. Check out the curved glass on this set, the new and improved prisoner outfit (nobody wears black and white stripes anymore; we're all about orange jumpsuits for prisoners), new colors and shapes and all kinds of specialty pieces, and that futuristic police car. I also like the obvious camera mounted on the station wall. I'm not sure if the City theme replaced the old LEGO Town theme, or if City is in fact a long-lived subtheme within Town (most LEGO websites treat it as such) but when City came out with a police station in 2005, it was happenin'. It's got a dog, a complex lock-up cell, vastly improved vehicle and architectural design, spotlights, and a raised platform to make the station itself much more interesting. This is a busy set, and there's a lot going on. Compare this in particular to the original 1970s sets and look how much the concept has evolved! But this isn't the final word on LEGO police stations; one more recent set came out in 2008 that I'll cover next...

The final police set is, in a way, a harking back to some original design ideas, just modernized. It's not quite as busy, it's not trying to do too much... it feels a little cozier and less ACTION-PACKED! ALL THE TIME! It's even got flowers and shrubs. But... it's a lot improved, too. The cars are pretty slick and realistic (considering), the gate entrances are a nice realistic touch, and the building has a lot going on: the side balcony, the little office, the holding cells, the lookout tower and radar; in fact, this seems almost half a prison instead of just a police station. Anyway, that concludes my tour of the police station history in LEGO, and hopefully makes my broader point more apparent; that the same concept, when it's held forth over time, has been greatly improved upon and is much better done these days then when they started. That's not necessarily surprising, but... it's nice to know that it's true nonetheless.

Blacktron City

Here's some video of a gigantic Blacktron city, taken from a LEGO convention a couple of years ago. Pretty impressive stuff. Adding the Men in Black theme by Danny Elfman was also brilliant.

Blacktron was always my favorite subtheme. Not only was it the first subtheme from the greater Space theme, but it also happened to be one that was a bit more sinister, a bit darker and edgier; these were the first LEGO "bad guys" that I know of. Nobody knew exactly what made them bad, but the fact that the paramilitaristic Space Police line-up had to lock these guys away in those little prison pods, plus their dark, pure black suits, and their nearly black trimmed with yellow like some kind of dark hornet color scheme for their vehicles made them attractive all around. In general, LEGO Space fans tend to be quite fond of the original LEGO space villains.

I'm not sure what all the marching Classic Space minifigs are up to. Are they attacking Blacktron? Are they Blacktron agents getting ready to infiltrate the rest of LEGO Space? Or is Blacktron on friendly terms with them in this scenario, and has invited them to come by via parade? I have no idea.

As an old timey Space fan, I'm also quite jazzed about the Galaxy Commander in variant color schemes at about 1:07 on the video. There's an original Galaxy Commander, but there's also one in Ice Planet colors, one in M:Tron colors, and one in Space Police I colors. All four are excellent.

The only thing that's actually somewhat disappointing it seeing row after row of the same vehicles parked. That's realistic, after a fashion... but somewhat boring.

Space Police III: Gold Heist

I got to check out the set 5971 "Gold Heist" which is the smallish medium sized set of the new Space Police III line-up, retailing for 19.99 U$D. As you can see from the image, it looks great. One thing that I'll say about the newer Space lines (and I suspect this is the influence of having done years and years of Star Wars sets); the design aesthetic has really improved. For comparison, I built my 6897 "Rebel Hunter" and 6984 "Galactic Mediator"; two space ships from the Space Police II line that I own, and they look really clunky and silly in comparison.

The other thing that became apparent shortly upon buying this; it's not a space ship. It looks like one at first glance, but these new Space Policemen don't wear oxygen tanks, or even a fully enclosed helmet, and the engines aren't rockets; they're VTOLs, very similar to the jet engines on some of the City theme airport sets, or other sets that feature jet engines, such as Agents or others. No, rather, this is the proverbial flying car; something equivalent to the speeders in which Anakin and Obiwan chased the bounty hunter in Attack of the Clones. Relative to earlier Space Police themes, this one also has a much more... well, much more "police-ish" look to it; the vehicle is white with black trim, has red and blue sirens, etc. This is kinda in line with the little flash movies that LEGO has put out on their homepage; for one of the sets, the Space Policeman is literally pulling over an alien for running a red light.

Anyway, that's the good. Here's the bad. Stickers. I know, I know; LEGO has fallen in love with stickers. I'm sure that it's cheaper for them than printing on the bricks, which they seem completely unwilling to do anymore. It sure does suck for the consumer though. I will not stop complaining about stickers. They bite. It's a pain to put them on, it's very difficult to get them straight and properly aligned, and they just don't even look nearly as good either. Also; this set lacks "swoopability." It looks like the kind of set that would be tons of fun to pick up and fly around through the air making "swooshing" sounds, but you actually can't do that very well. It's got too many moving parts. The canopy moves all over the place. The jet engines, front and rear, move all over the place. The safe that it's carrying in the arc in the back feels rickety. The little hot rod "space moped" that the alien is flying is tiny and kinda silly. (The alien himself is very cool, with a weird lizard like head and four arms. They did this by creating a very bizarrely cast "head" piece that is actually an additional torso section and head combined, and then has green "battle droid" or "skeleton" arms attached to this head piece. The rest of the body is regular minifig stuff.)

Still; those reservations aside, this is a promising ship, and the line itself is promising as well (for that matter, so was the Mars Mission line that relaunched LEGO Space a couple of years ago.) This bodes well for the future of my beloved Space theme, which I hope to see progress for some time to come.

Interestingly enough, the box refers to a LEGO Space video game for the Nintendo DS, which it says is "Now Available." Even though it's also rated "Rating Pending." Clearly the box art was approved some time ago, and the game has not managed to meet the schedule. Rumors are floating around the internet ever since this Space Police packaging started appearing promising what sounds like a fun video game... which isn't actually available after all. Including that it may be available for the Wii too.

I'm really curious to see this. I wonder if it'll revisit a lot of the other Space subthemes from past years, and even revisit classic favorite sets from the past? Here's hopin'. Since I've got boys who love most of the LEGO games to date (especially the ones done by Traveller's Tales and based on licensed properties; the Star Wars, Indiana Jones and Batman games) if this game is even at all good, I can almost guarantee that we'll get it.

More LEGO space

I wonder if there's any value in trying to make some sense out of the LEGOverse and craft an actual setting based on the ideas therein?

Much of the earlier stuff is fairly generic. Classic Space doesn't imply, really, that these guys are anything other than astronauts exploring the Moon, and possibly other space bodies. When the subthemes started happening, though, they got more interesting.

Blacktron (both varieties) were definately villains. Other villainous subthemes were Spyrius, UFO, and Insectoids (originally planned to be a villainous organization for the Rock Raiders... but see below), while Mars Mission and Space Police 3 have "bad guys" embedded within the theme (making the reboot of the Space subthemes after the Star Wars hiatus seem more like self-contained units.)

The Space Police (1, 2 and 3), Unitron, and Roboforce subthemes are the "heroic" guys; the good guys of the LEGO space universe. All of them are some kind of space law enforcement, with Unitron having an almost (but not quite) militaristic feel to them.

A lot of subthemes also seem like civilians: the original Classic astronauts, Futuron, M:Tron, Ice Planet, and Exploriens. The astronauts of Life on Mars and Mars Mission don't seem to fit the paradigm quite so cozily; they abandon the "space opera" feel of the other Space subthemes, and instead come across as a more "hard SF" tone, or at least the attempt at such. Also they seem to be a more near-future, almost realistic astronaut and vehicle vibe to them. Well, Life on Mars does anyway. Mars Mission is a more localized space opera with human astronauts fighting off Martians. I'm not quite sure that those two subthemes can be reconciled with the rest of the subthemes.

Some other themes, though---not overtly space, fit in fairly nicely with the Space theme. Two town themes, Launch Command and Space Port, have a astronaut feel, but today's astronauts, today's space shuttles and satellites, etc. An interesting counterpoint, even if all you do with them is mix the parts into your parts bin. There are a number of other themes that are overtly science fictionish in nature, although not set in space, that could also concieveably be reimagined into the LEGO Space universe. The various Aquazone themes: Aquanauts, Aquasharks, Aqua Raiders, Hydronauts and Stingrays are futuristic undersea guys, and even include alien humanoids, or something of that nature. I'd like to think that besides airless Moon-like worlds, the LEGO Space guys may also have found a habitable planet completely covered in water, and that's where these guys live. The Exo-Force theme is based on Japanese manga/anime about big giant robots and the guys who pilot them, so it's also a good fit with Space. I'm not sure where they fit; possibly a militaristic subgroup that is at odds with itself (there are two factions within Exo-Force.) The Rock Raiders and the Power Miners are two themes that have people driving futuristic drilling machines under the earth and finding rock monsters already living there. This could be another civilian group, easily enough, and I think that they'd work well anywhere within the LEGO Space universe as such. Given the fact that the Insectoids were originally going to be a Rock Raiders "bad guy" and later became a Space "bad guy" I think the ties already exist.

What would I do with this pretext; this unification of the LEGO Space subthemes and a few other sci-fi feeling themes, into a coherent setting?

I'm not sure yet. But I might toy around with the idea a bit more before I move on to something else.

Also: just for fun, I included a really slick picture of some guy's LEGO creation of a shipyard, with a ship under construction.

LEGO Space

This blog entry is going to be very image intensive.

As an imaginative kid, fascinated with science fiction, and spending my formative childhood years during the late 70s and early 80s, I was fascinated with the new-fangled Space sets. In 1978, LEGO introduced a number of "lines" of sets that were themed. Space was always my favorite (although I grew up with a fair share of Castle and Town themed sets as well, of course.) In fact, it became traditional for us as kids to expect several LEGO sets each Christmas; at least one big one and several medium sized and smaller ones. And after opening presents, we'd go into the "boys' room", open up the LEGO sets, build them according to the instructions, almost immediately take them apart, mix their pieces in with our existing LEGOs, and then just spend the entire rest of the day (and much of the rest of the Christmas vacation) playing LEGOs. I've attached an image of the Galaxy Explorer, the very first "big spaceship" set in existance.

I didn't go on to be one of those adult Legomaniacs, who collects sets and builds all new designs as a hobby (which would, unfortunately, be a pretty expensive hobby, too) but I've never quite lost the mystique for the feel of those early Space sets, and the kinda campy, kinda cute and kinda clever later lines that developed after the fact. And I do pick up sets now and again for myself, that I won't even let the kids play with. I keep my toe in the water of fandom, anyway.

The original space line was fairly straightforward; it featured astronauts in space suits, and things like lunar rovers and space ships that seemed futuristic... yet not too much so. They were futuristic in the sense that the movie 2001 was futuristic in the late 60s when it was made; it all seemed pretty reasonable, all things considered. This wasn't necessarily true of the space sets; I remember even as a kid thinking it odd that flared rocket "exit chute" could be attached directly the back of the seat that an astronaut was supposed to sit in in his little tiny space-going flyer (where the heck is the actual engine?) but it had that same feel anyway.

Later on, Space diverged into multiple subthemes. Futuron was the first one, in the late 80s, followed closely by Blacktron, Space Police, and more. In fact, for a while it seemed that each theme had a three year life cycle, with a new theme appearing every year and an old theme phasing out. This lasted for quite some time, until the entire Space theme essentially disappeared at the very end of the 90s. The gap was filled temporarily by the Star Wars sets.

More recently, for whatever reason, LEGO has revived the space theme, and two subthemes have come out. One of them has apparently just launched within the last few months, and is a "re-do" of a classic theme, the Space Police idea. This is, in fact, the third version of Space Police. I've included an image of the new "big spaceship" of the line, as well as the original "big spaceship" from the old Space Police line. Enjoy.

Another thing I've discovered is that some of these older Legomaniacs have been putting their stuff online for years (actually, I've known that for years too, but the building standards and photography and Photoshop capabilities of them has improved, to the point where a lot of their work looks tons better than official stuff. Here's a few of my favorites, all snagged from the retro-blog http://www.neoclassicspace.com/.

Dark Sun for 2010

Although I'm not a 4e player, I have to admit that I'm kinda excited about the recent announcement, coming out from GenCon, that Dark Sun is going to be the new setting for 2010. I might even buy it, even without having the game itself!

I don't actually know that much about Dark Sun really, but the concept intrigues me greatly. Perhaps not surprisingly; when I start describing my favorite homebrew setting ever, Dark•Heritage, I very often get told by folks that it sounds like Dark Sun. Since I never knew much about Dark Sun, if that's really true, then it's a rather exciting convergence. In the original "Campaign Classics" issue of Dragon magazine, the authors interviewed the original setting developers, and the Dark Sun guys said that Dark Sun used Barsoom as a basis for the setting, rather than Middle-earth. That probably explains the similarity; a fairly dried out, tired world full of alien creatures.

Of course, that also could imply that my setting and Dark Sun only superficially resemble each other at a high level. That's probably true. In any case, I'm excited to see what Dark Sun is really and truly all about. So far, most of what I know about it I learned on Wikipedia.

Also; that appears to be Wayne Reynolds artwork for the cover. I love Wayne Reynolds.

In Search of the Trojan War

I just watched the 6-hour BBC miniseries In Search of the Trojan War (again) which, while nearly 25 years old now, still is mostly accurate and most of the conclusions narrator slash amateur archeologist and historian Michael Wood presents are amongst the accepted mainstream hypotheses nowadays. Personally, my favorite episodes are the last two; the ones that put the putative historical core that formed the basis for The Iliad in historical context of what was going on in the eastern Mediterranean, Aegean and Asia Minor regions between about 1300 B.C. and 1180 or so B.C. (the Trojan War being dated to roughly 1250 B.C.)

Wood presents an intriguing scenario; a patchwork of Empires (the so-called "Great Powers Club") of the historical near east include Egypt, Hatti, Babylon, Assyria, Mitanni and possibly the Achaean Greeks as a member on the northwestern fringe, with a number of other powerful city-states that serve more as clients, vassals and occasionally rebellious kingdoms with pretentions to greatness, including Amurru, Arzawa, the Assuwa Confederation, Israel, etc.

The last decades of the Bronze Age are characterized by inter-Imperial "cold wars" which occasionally flared up into real battles. With the exception of the famous clash at Qadesh, in which Hittite and Egyptian forces fought directly, this was often mostly done by these empires offering up sacrificial clients; Egypt and Babylon (and later Assyria) encouraged and supported rebellions of client states in the Levant, and Greek interference on the west coast of Asia Minor (including, perhaps, the historical core of the Trojan War itself) caused a possible conflict with the Hittites, as reported in the "Tawagalawa Letter" recoved on clay tablet from the Hittite archive at Boğazköy in present day Turkey.

Of course, this appearance of vibrancy was perhaps a bit of a sham, because a few decades later, the infamous Bronze Age collapse occured. The Mycenean palace civilization was thrown into ruins, and Greece entered a 500 year dark age. The Hittite kingdom completely disappeared, to be subsequently nearly completely forgotten for thousands of years, and the Phrygians (probably of Balkan origin) later rule over their territory. Almost every city state from the Dardanelles to the Nile was destroyed. Egypt kept the best records of the time, recounting numerous battles with the displaced "Sea Peoples"; of mysterious extraction, they appear to be entire displaced populations looking for places to settle.

When the dust cleared, the Hittites were gone, the Myceneans were gone, the Mitanni were gone, the Philistines and other foreign populations were settled into new lands, and the so-called Iron Age was in full swing. Greece later emerged from its dark age as Classical Greece, Asia Minor's culture and ethnic make-up was completely changed, the Levant and the Phoenicians/Canaanites had almost completely replaced the Greeks as the Mediterranean naval power, and other vast changes in societies throughout the Near East had taken place.

I bring this up, because going through Deadhouse Gates, which I'm currently reading (only about 20-25% complete so far) has made me think that this same basic plot outline would make an absolutely fascinating story arc for a long, fantasy epic of the type that Erikson writes. Twist the geography a bit so it's not immediately recognizeable, make all of the various entities unrecognizeable culturally and linguistically, and you've got a skeletal outline of an incredible fantasy epic; the story of the fall of empires.

Great stuff. I think history also provides great fodder for "fantasization" in the form of the history of the Tarim basin, but that's a post for another day...

God in the Bowl

I read the second trade paperback from Dark Horse's Conan series. This one features, mostly, "The God in the Bowl" one of the slightly slower, yet more interesting Conan stories told, about a murder investigation. It bears a striking resemblance in some ways to Howard's version of the famous Sherlock Holmes story, "The Adventure of the Speckled Band."

Kurt Busiek and Cary Nord continue to impress with this volume. The rest of the book is taken up with some original stories, including the first encounter of Conan with sorcerous arch-nemesis Thoth-Amon, when Conan thwarts his attempt on the life of a more benign sorcerer, Kalanthes, the High Priest of Ibis. An all new character, Janissa, is introduced, who is kinda Red Sonja like in some ways, although much darker in nature and background. She's a really interesting character, actually, that I'd like to see more of.

One thing that Busiek (and Co.) really get is the Lovecraftian horror vibe that is actually quite integral to the Conan canon. Thoth-Amon (and the Hyperboreans before him) are shown as completely amoral predators who don't fear to let loose any kind of horror whatsoever in pursuit of their goals.

This book, taking place mostly in Nemedia, shows Conan approaching the more "classic" parts of the setting, away from the far north that featured in volume 1, although, like vol 1, it's heavily based around an actual Howard story that's told extremely well. In fact, in some ways, this recreation of Howard's story is better than Howard's original.

d20 Freeport Companion, part 1

Although I haven't read the entire document yet (see my discussion of reading gaming PDFs below) I've read a fair chunk of the d20 Freeport Companion, a book that I almost didn't bother with. I'm kinda glad I did; I expected it would mostly stat up NPCs from the systemless setting, and while it did indeed do that, that took much less space than I thought, leaving room for a number of other things that I found quite useful. Let me review the sections that I've read individually. Ignoring the Introduction and whatnot, which I did read, but which isn't worth reviewing. As a quick aside, note the change in title of the document; I bought (and have) the d20 Freeport Companion. Because of the change in the d20 license, this is now renamed the 3rd Era Freeport Companion and the image I grabbed from Green Ronin reflects that. It does not use the d20 license (and, in fact, can't) but the OGL only. They've also created a nifty badge that kinda looks like the old d20 logo, but which says 3rd Era to identify it. Nice move.

Races in Freeport: The first chapter is relatively short, and mostly describes how the various D&D races make up the population of Freeport. There's little mechanically in here; stats for races already exist in proper D&D products and aren't repeated. There is a sidebar for a gnome variant; a militaristic, hard-nosed gnome variant, and then there's stats for the azhar which are essentially fire genasi without the LA +1. I'd like to see this same treatment applied to the rest of the planetouched races, actually. I really like the concept of tieflings and aasimar, but the LA +1 mechanism is a hassle.

Classes in Freeport: There are a number of alternate classes that the book proposes as well. A lot of people dislike alternate 20-level classes, but I actually quite like them, and I want a lot of them. The more there are, the more likely that I can get the character I want without baggage and assumptions that I don't. The classes presented here are the assassin, the corsair, the monster hunter, the noble, and the survivor. Most of them are interesting and a useful addition to a player's toolkit, but all of them are more focused than the PHB classes, and that works against some of them.

The Assassin is basically a variant rogue. It's got rogue BAB and HD, two good saves, an ability that's similar to sneak attack (but not quite---doesn't work in flanking positions) and an a la carte menu of abilities similar to the rogue's list, but different. Frankly, I'd rather see this as variant abilities for a rogue rather than as a unique class; I really liked the idea of a core assassin class, but I found the application of it feeling superfluous. In almost all cases, I'd rather just have a rogue, with a few of the class abilities here ported over or converted to feats.

The Corsair occupies the same space and niche as Complete Warrior's swashbuckler class, but with a slightly more nautical bent. I like it better, actually, although a canny GM might want to swap out a class ability or two in a non-nautical setting. It's also got a sneak-attack-but-not-quite ability; actually slightly better than sneak attack, because it works in one more situation (attacks for non-lethal damage.) In the case of both this class and the assassin, I think the new ability was superfluous and adds unnecessary complexity. Sneak attack as is is already good enough.

The Monster Hunter is an interesting class; kinda ranger-like, but focused very, very specifically on the favored enemy concept, taking that idea and driving it to be an entire class. Realistically, some of the options will almost never be used (a campaign in which taking favored enemies of oozes or plants, for example, has got to be extremely rare) and a few monster classes actually provide benefits that always work (I'm especially thinking of fey; there's no reason not to max this one out because its general utility is so good) but otherwise, I found the concept intriguing.

The Noble is to the aristocrat NPC class what the fighter is to the warrior NPC class, and oddly enough covers much of the same space as a bard, except without spellcasting. It's a support class that makes everybody in the group better with some abilities, makes enemies less competent, and has a lot of chances to shine in non-combat roleplaying situations, since they're suave, persuasive and imperative by nature. This is a nice take on an old concept; several other d20 games have had noble classes (Star Wars, Wheel of Time) and several other settings have had takes on the noble as well, occasionally under different names (Sovereign Stone, Dragonlance, Rokugan). I like this take on it, though.

Finally, The Survivor is an alt.monk that isn't so supernaturally flavored. As such, it's not likely to ever be a favorite class of mine (I'm not a huge fan of the whole concept of the monk) but I'll probably like it better than the monk itself. I think the defender from Midnight is probably the last word in this space, but I'd like to lay the survivor and the defender side by side and see which one I like best.

Madness in Freeport: Given that Freeport features an awful lot of Lovecraftian influence, it's perhaps not surprising that it also features a Sanity mechanic. Unlike the open content Sanity mechanic released under Unearthed Arcana, this isn't merely a porting of the Cthulhu mechanic, it's actually a native d20 mechanic, and one that's simpler than its predecessor. Basically it works by having character accrue "Madness points" that are, usually, detrimental (although in certain circumstances it's not necessarily bad to be a little crazy.) Typical D&D mechanics can remove them (higher level cleric spells like heal, although lower level spells like calm emotions can make you temporarily immune to the effects of your madness points.)

It's a little complex to introduce, but anyone who's ever played a Cthulhu-themed game will tell you that it's part of the fun to have the risk of growing insanity looming over your character. Plus, it's still less complex than any of the alternatives I've read.

Freeport Bestiary: There's a smallish bestiary of new monsters and stuff to face. In fact, there's quite a few entries, although they aren't described in much detail. I was a bit spoiled by the Creatures of Freeport supplement (a PDF that I have read) and all the detail it lavished on its entries; this was more MM format; just the stats and a quick summary of how it works. Some of the stuff is Freeport specific---Howard-esque serpent people, burnlings, etc. but other stuff is merely nautical of pirate-themed fun stuff, like brass monkeys, blemmyaes and shadow serpents. All in all, this kind of stuff is always useful, but then again, I've also got so much of it that I feel overwhelmed by options when looking for critters against which to pit my PCs.

In another post, at some point, I'd like to review the prestige classes, the skills, feats and magic portions of the book, and the included adventure, which will pretty much get all the content reviewed.

One final note, for those who care about this kind of thing (I don't, usually, but then again, I don't publish)---the book is very generous with its open content. Almost the entire book is open content, with the exception of the adventure itself and the proper names of the NPCs. The Section 15 of the OGL document is also very long, although I question whether or not it really needs to be. I think Green Ronin has habitually put most of their entire catalog in the Section 15 whether they actually took any rules from every given product, or not. That means, they also have to put everyone else that was quoted in the Section 15 of every one of the products listed in their Section 15. This trickle down effect has caused there to be at least 50-60 line items in the section 15. Not important exactly, just curious.

Gaming PDFs

At one point, about a year or two ago, I went on a rash of gaming PDF purchases. It seemed liked a good idea at the time; instant delivery, reduced cost, ability to copy and paste, etc. However, I've since found out that it doesn't really work for me. So now, I'm sitting on a fairly big pile of PDFs that I don't use and in most cases, haven't read.

Maybe it'd be different if I had a laptop. As it is, I only have one computer where it's reasonable for me to read them, and that computer is shared. In other words, most of the time I want to use it, my wife or my kids are on it. In addition, it's in a room where distractions abound, and it's difficult to get through long stretches of computer text. And, I just find the format is not conducive to long reading. Books composed of shorter, discrete sections (like monster books, for instance) work better than most other types, but in general, even they're harder for me to use.

However, I've decided to make a concerted effort to better see what I've got on PDF, and read at least sections of many of them. To check them out for posterity, and possible utility in my own game. So, I've recently been reading many sections of the d20 Freeport Companion. This was truly an impulse buy, brought about shortly after my acquisition of The Pirate's Guide to Freeport which is an excellent resource, but which is completely systemless. At first, I was content to let things remain that way, since the way I play doesn't demand a lot of system support. But, like I said, when I got caught up in my PDF acquisition frenzy, I got that one. Turns out, it has a number of pretty nifty things in it. My next post will be a review of portions of the d20 Freeport Companion, most especially the new classes, the races chapter, and the madness chapter, with a few other comments thrown in for fun.

Kids' D&D, session 2

I sat down with Alex and Spencer for about an hour again this weekend. Their character, Bendek the sorcerer and Ormando the ranger, checked out their new digs on the edge of Sandpoint, slept for the night, had breakfast and went out on the town to see if there was any sherrifing work that needed doing.

Sure enough, a young man came running into town saying that he was attacked on the old forest road, and he had to flee, leaving his brother and their entire crop of turnips for the season on the road. Ormando and Bendek hefted their weapons and jogged off into the northern forest road.

Road was a generous description; it was a very narrow set of two ruts, overgrown in the middle with grass, and shadowed by looming trees that grew just to the side of the path. It didn't take long to find the cart, sitting in the middle of the road. There was blood sprayed on the side of it.

It was eerily silent here. No birds or animals made any sound. Ormando caught sight of some footprints; booted ones and also bare, human-like prints with long claw-like toenails. Following the tracks, about 50 years into the woods he found a body lying facedown in the ferns. When he turned it over, it groaned. The kid's brother. He was still alive. They bandaged him up, but he was mostly delirious. Ranting about "the wrong people" while they worked, he didn't give them much to go on, but certainly creeped them out. They hauled him back to the cart and put him down carefully on top of the turnips.

That's when something attacked them. It looked like a person... kinda... except that it was very emaciated, had pale, grayish skin that was shrunken around its wiry muscles like a mummy, had glowing red eyes, and long teeth and claw-like nails. It clawed at them, and Ormando could feel poison seeping through his veins. Bendek tried to put it to sleep magically, but nothing happened. He changed tack and blasted it with a magical missile attack. Ormando slashed at it with his sword and axe. Another one loped out of the woods, making their case more desperate. They finally managed to bring the first one down, but now Bendek lay on the ground paralyzed by the poison of the creature's claws. Ormando fought well, but soon found himself feeling faint.

Bendek finally managed to shake off the paralytic effects and kill the creature with a well-placed spell, and then he had to bandage up the unconscious Ormando, load him on the cart along with the farmer (and the turnips) and the strange bodies of their assailants, and carry them slowly out of the forest.

In town, the brothers were reunited happily, and the two sherrifs were given complimentary bowls of chicken soup and told to take the rest of the day off, while their companion Jeffers took care of them while they convalesced.

They got a clue or two. The assailants were identified as guards that were with a merchant wagon that came through town about a week ago, before heading up north to try his mercantile luck up there. When they were in town, they looked like normal people, not weird semi-vampiric undead things. They were told that the merchant who had employed them was a frequent passer-by throughout the region, and they could expect him to come through again within a few days, after doing his usual rounds of the villages in the area.

Next time...

I dunno. Any ideas?

Conan and the Frost Giant's Daughter

I didn't have this on my "What I'm Reading" sidebar, but I have also been reading the trade paperback collection of Conan stories by Darkhorse Comics, volume 1. Kurt Busiek is the writer, and Cary Nord is the penciller. Darkhorse made a stylistic decision to not ink the Conan stuff, which actually looks really good. It gives the book a slightly rougher, almost unfinished look to it, which reminds me somewhat of Frazetta's style. I've seen other books done that way (such as the Wolverine trade paperback Origin pencilled by Andy Kubert, but it doesn't have quite the same feel to it.) Cary Nord just has a better style for Conan, I think.

The best part of this is that not only does Cary Nord dig the Frazetta style, but Kurt Busiek is a brilliant writer who gets Howard better than any pastiche writer to date, in my opinion. The centerpiece of all of the trade paperbacks is an adaptation of one of Howard's actual stories, but the other stories, and framing elements and transition pieces feel seamless with them. The Howard story here is, naturally enough, "The Frost Giant's Daughter" but the opening segment, with Conan making friends of a sort with the Aesir amongst whom he's traveling, and the follow-up story of Conan enslaved by the Hyperboreans, works brilliantly as well.

This Conan isn't a dumb jock like the movie version, and he isn't a heroic figure, like past pastiches have often painted him: he's a surly, moody barbarian. He's got some nobility of spirit, but he's also a scary man in a lot of ways. The setting, too, has a ripe Howardesque, sword & sorcery feel to it. It's decadent, it's brutal, and it's sleazy.

Although I'm not adding them to my sidebars, I'm going through the next 4-5 or so trade paperbacks again---I own the first four, and I've got the next two coming via Interlibrary Loan. So, if I throw in a quick and dirty review (like this one) don't be too surprised.

Hawk and Fisher

I was puttering around Amazon, when my recent re-encounter with drnuncheon's Freeport Story Hour reminded me to check out Hawk and Fisher. drnuncheon himself considers them to be a significant influence on the scenario (at the very least, the paradigm of a male/female team of Watch members patrolling the worst beat in a thoroughly corrupt fantasy city was cribbed from those novels, which is a great take on Freeport, by the way.) A number of months ago, I had picked up Swords in Haven at Borders, which is the first three Hawk and Fisher novels republished and repackaged in a single volume by ROC Trade Publishing, a division of Penguin that focuses on the fantastic.

I haven't read it yet, because I've got a very long list of "To Read" books that I own. I'm barely crawling through the two books that are currently works in progress as it is, what with the summer schedule and all.

However, I saw the second volume (Guards of Haven), collecting the original books four through six, for $.03 on Amazon, via a used book seller. In Like New condition. (By the way, S&H was $3.99. Total bill, $4.02. I've bought a fair number of books where the price itself was essentially nothing, but the S&H was twice or more what actual shipping would be. I suppose it's a decent way to offload catalog of used books. Shrug.) So I ordered it. I'm also going to shortlist the first Hawk and Fisher book to read immediately after I finish the Steven Erikson doorstop novel that I'm reading now.

Freeport Story Hour

"Story Hours" are an interesting phenomena, particular to ENWorld, the premiere website and discussion forum for Dungeons & Dragons (yes, I prefer it to the official discussion forums on the Wizards of the Coast website.) It's an interesting concept; the whole "let me tell you about my campaign" writ large. Because the web as a forum is only semi-sensitive to audience reaction, it's possible for people to say an awful lot about stuff that you wouldn't be able to in regular conversation. Huge info-dumps, even. This is how the "story hour" idea started; people wrote and posted logs of their games; what happened, in blow by blow detail.

This later "multifurcated", if that's a word, into a number of styles. Some people use story hours as fairly sparse shorthand for what happened. Some people elaborate with recitations of dialogue, NPC vignettes, and other things that make the form more closely resemble "regular" literature. Some people are very strict about only including exactly what happened in game. Others are writing long after the fact, and are recreating from vague memories the details of the game in broad strokes.

In any case, a "market" for "story hours" developed at ENWorld to the point where a subforum was created specifically to cater to them, and some story hours have become big draws for the site.

One that I've always enjoyed is drnuncheon's (that's the guy's username, anyway) Freeport Story Hour, a recitation of a playthrough of the original third edition Freeport Trilogy, and an interesting exploration of the setting, and urban fantasy gaming in general. In fact, when I've been asked (and it's come up a few times) how to do a successful urban fantasy campaign, one of the first things I do is point them to this story hour. It's a great example of a successful campaign set in a fantasy urban environment, where the adventures take place (often) within the city itself, instead of out in a "dungeon" somewhere.

The story hour is also very breezily written; it settles into a more of a "semi-novel" style, with dialogue and good descriptions of action, and relatively few intrusive "gameisms" in the narrative. After starting out as more of a game log, anyway. The author then does go on in other "out of narration" posts to give some interesting game info too. I could recommend a number of story hours (I've always been partial to barsoomcore's various efforts (of Scratch Factory fame) for instance, and I've yet to meet anyone who didn't like jonrog1's or PirateCat's story hours) but for today, drnuncheon gets the honors of being recommended. I strongly suggest you check out the Dr.'s efforts.

Sadly, ENWorld has been going through a bit of a server crisis of some kind, and response time is fairly slow. Nonetheless, I recommend opening a spare window and get it to start loading. They might still have the tool to download the thread as a text file; that seems like the best way to go.

Here's the link. Also, check out the picture below of the Freeport Trilogy (combined and updated to 3.5 version) by Wayne Reynolds.

http://www.enworld.org/forum/story-hour/103-drnuncheons-freeport-story-hour.html

Peter Mullen

Peter Mullen is a practicing (and teaching) artist who has clearly been inspired by Erol Otus, and has an online gallery that shows very keenly that inspiration.

I think it's kinda fun. I'm not a huge Erol Otus fan; it's a strange sort of very simplified and stylized kind of art that actually is easy to mistake for "amateurish" if you don't know what you're looking for; certainly it's a rejection of more realistic or detailed art styles.

However, I think the gallery linked below is kinda fun. It's got a very nostalgic feel to it, and there's technical proficiency there alright; you just have to know what you're looking for to see it in the interplay of light and shadow, and composition.

http://www.freewebs.com/mullenart/art.htm

I've put one of my favorites up as a sample; a black and white pencil (or chalk; the resolution isn't high enough for me to be sure) image of an astronaut on the moon encountering the skeleton of a prior astronaut half buried in the lunar dust. A very intriguing concept, and very well composed.

Surprise party I missed

This last weekend, I was invited (secretly, by the wife of a friend of mine who lives a few hours away) to join them for a surprise birthday party. Unfortunately, I had prior committments related to my oldest son and his Scout Camp, so I couldn't go. However, the reason I mention this is because I also anticipated that when I get together with this guy, some awesome gaming will ensue. He's already a legendary GM, with a legendary setting under his belt, and the two of us are remarkably of a similar mind and tastes when it comes to almost everything gaming related.

And that, plus the post I made last really reminds me how important it is to find folks with whom you mesh if you want to have a good gaming experience. When I first starting playing D&D again, back in the first year or so that 3e was in print, I found a group of guys more or less my age by advertising at a Wizards of the Coast retail store (none of which still exist, I believe, although that's neither here nor there.) At the time, I was happy with that; we did some decent gaming, and it was fun to try out the new system that I otherwise probably wouldn't have been using. However, I didn't really mesh well with these guys gaming wise; I got along well enough with them otherwise, but what I wanted from the game and what they wanted didn't really intersect very well. Plus, I had to drive really far to get to the location in which they gamed. When my third kid Alexander was born, that was a good excuse for me to drop out and not end up coming back. Plus, around that time, my wife overheard some folks at church mention D&D, and the next thing I knew, I was involved with another group that was much closer to home.

This group and I also initially thrived; we got along very well as friends, but... again, I found out fairly soon that our gaming tastes were not very compatible. They tended more towards traditional high fantasy, where I was moving more and more towards a low fantasy, sword & sorcery, dark fantasy or even horror vibe. Albeit with a swashbuckling flair. Plus; they had terrible follow-through; I don't know how many abortive campaigns we started only to have them fizzle without any conclusion.

Around that time, I was stumbling into the group that I have now; a group of guys (and one lady). And while I don't know that we're all on the same page gaming wise either, at least we seem better able to rotate through styles and allow other folks to get what they want from time to time. In most respects, this is the best gaming I've ever had with these guys, and I'm glad that we all came across each other.

Now, in an ideal world, I'd find people with my exact tastes, and distance would be no barrier. The guy who's surprise party I had to miss (sorry, dude!)? He'd be in my regular group. Along with a bunch of other people spread throughout the globe who've demonstrated that we're on exactly the same page gaming wise. One way to attempt this is play-by-post. Sadly, I've only had limited successes with this medium, but with the right people, it seems a viable way to game. It's not really the same as face-to-face gaming at all, but it can still be fun.

The secret of a successful Pbp is one that I don't know for sure how you can gauge upfront though; you need people who are very actively engaged, who post regularly, and who help keep up the momentum. I've seen from sad experience that the GM cannot drive that kind of thing on his own. It simply doesn't work. Also, players who post a lot, but who do absolutely nothing to drive the game forward are also a bit deceptive (not on purpose!) in that it seems activity is going on, but in reality, the game isn't happening. I think it's a lack of social cues like you'd see in face to face that cause this problem, but you need a few people who are willing to take decisive action, who are anxiously engaged in the game, and who are willing to see it through and not lose interest after a few weeks or months. Keeping the pace up in a Pbp is very difficult indeed.

My current Pbp, which is stalled due to technical issues at the site where I run it, is basically "run" by two of the players. Most of the players are fairly active, but two of them are the ones who "drive" the game by acting decisively. I think without them, the game would really have floundered, so to you two: my hat's off. Thanks!

The art of running a game

I was recently involved in an online discussion (unexpected and bizarre virtual slapfight is a better description) about the role of a gamemaster (GM) in a roleplaying game. The discussion sparked from a comment made about Tracy Hickman and the old Dragonlance modules, which are notoriously "railroady" modules, i.e., if played as written, they are really only allowed to unfold in a single way. Many (if not most) players dislike playing in such an environment, because being told that strategies they might come across arbitrarily fail because they're not the "golden" ones that the author and/or the GM anticipates and "writes" ahead of time is not very fun. I've been on the recieving end of a railroad at least once that really comes to mind, and it kinda sucks.

Anyway, I made an offhand comment following a description by one guy that those modules sucked and that it was the module's fault. I firmly believe that it was the GM's fault, and here's the reasons why.

When someone takes on the role of the GM, they also take on the responsibility voiced by Harry Truman: "The buck stops here." The GM is always responsible for what happens at the table. He can't blame a lousy module, because one of his prime responsibilities if presenting a good game to the players. This means, at a minimum, adapting the play experience to what the players want, but ideally it means screening and modifying the plans for the session. A module that's clearly a railroad with a group that doesn't like railroads (i.e., most groups) needs to have the railroady aspects jettisoned and the GM needs to allow other methods of reaching the conclusion of the module.

My own philosophy, not that I'm suggesting that this is the "best" merely what works best for me, is to read modules and adventures with an eye towards taking vignettes; interesting locations, encounters, NPCs and concepts, but recombining and "kitbashing" them together into my own creation that best suits the needs of my campaign.

Japanese people are weird...

On the off chance that you didn't already know that, or don't believe it, check out this trailer for RoboGeisha. Coming soon to a Japanese theater. Probably not near you.