19th Level

I recently took my backer draft copy of the DCC Lankhmar set out for a few adventures. It's been fun - I find DCC to be a pretty good system for the setting. This got me thinking of my own history with Lankhmar - an experience which, judging by articles and interviews, is similar to DCC Lankhmar author Michael Curtis'. I first encountered Nehwon, the world of Lankhmar, in the pages of AD&D's 1st edition Deities and Demigods. It gave stats for Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser, the gods of Nehwon, various creatures, and gave an extremely high level overview of some of the organizations to be found there. It also mentioned the books these stories could be found in. Books I could not find. A few years later TSR came out with a Lankhmar: City of Adventure  supplement for AD&D. I loved it - a guide to Lankhmar and Nehwon. Lots of new rules for PCs. Looking back it did have the oddity of re-skinning white magic to be clerical magic and black magic to be standard magic-us...

RuneQuest is a game I’d love to get a bit more time playing. The first version I picked up was the Avalon Hill-published, Chaosium-produced 3rd edition of the game. For many, if not most people, RuneQuest is equivalent to Glorantha, the default setting of the game. However, the 3rd edition took place on a fantasy version of Earth, with Glorantha detailed in a book in the boxed set. My own experience with RuneQuest is in using it as the rules for a fantasy version of Earth, with the PCs being either Vikings or Lenape Native Americans, covering a fictional colony set up by Vikings in Manhattan around 1000 AD. It featured evil dwarfs, dragons, and lots of violence. It was a lot of fun. If it went much longer I think I would have thrown in some ninjas and dinosaurs... We actually used a fairly crunchy version of the rules, as designed by Nash and Whitaker for Mongoose Publishing, a set of rules that became the basis for The Design Mechanism’s RuneQuest 6th Edition  and lat...

I first encountered Fritz Leiber's Lankhmar in the 1980s in the pages of TSR's Deities & Demigods book for AD&D followed by their Lankhmar: City of Adventure sourcebook. I had a pretty difficult time finding collections of Leiber's stories - my recollection is they either were out of print or not at my local Waldenbooks, in these days before Amazon. It was shortly after I graduated college that White Wolf released a series of hardcovers compilations that I finally managed to read all of the stories - and it's been an awfully long time, it might be time for a reread. Lankhmar has found its way into a number of RPG properties. TSR released a number of Lankhnar products - AD&D wasn't a horrible match for the setting but I feel it needed a bit more tweaking than they gave it. Mongoose Publishing did two versions of Lankhmar for RuneQuest but to be honest, I was less than impressed by those efforts, though I think RuneQuest is a very good match for the s...

" Inhabitants Dwarves, dinosaurs, and humans are the main inhabitants of Slon." I was flipping through the pdf of The Guide to Glorantha while having lunch today and came across the above text. Which I found rather neat as I love dinosaurs and am a 30-year Glorantha newbie. Admittedly it's difficult to be a newbie for 30 years but I've somehow managed to do so. If my recollection is correct, I first encountered RuneQuest and Glorantha for the first time in 1986, receiving the Deluxe Boxed Set version of the 3rd edition of the game as a Christmas gift. I didn't know what to expect, but had heard enough about the game to be somewhat curious. Without an internet to guide me as to what was "wrong" with the game I was unaware that for most people RuneQuest and Glorantha were designed to be together. As I flipped through the box I found a foldout map of fantasy Europe. The box contained five main books. The first four were the Players, Magic, Game M...

In the dark ages prior to the internet, learning about new games was extremely challenging. If no one in your circle was familiar with a game you depended on magazine reviews, advertisements, or your own purchases to learn about new games. My circles did not have anyone familiar with RuneQuest. There was a lot D&D and its variations and some people I knew played a lot of FASA Star Trek. I found my way to Chaosium games through a roundabout journey. The March 1985 issue of Dragon magazine featured "The Dolphins of Known Space", detailing Dolphins for Chaosium's Ringworld game. I was unfamiliar with both the game system and its setting but was intrigued by both and wound up checking out both the game and the novel.  I was curious about the RuneQuest, which I'd begun hearing about. In 1986 my uncle got me a copy of the 3rd edition of RuneQuest for Christmas. I found it an interesting game but not really one appropriate for the gaming I'd been doing a...

There's been a bit more news than normal for the  Call of Cthulhu RPG. It's been over a year since I've played it so while I'm enjoying Icons, I'd be lying if I said I've no desire to return to it... Geek and Sundry seems to be providing a lot of coverage lately. A few days ago they had an article covering how Chaosium's Horror on the Orient Express  and Call of Cthulhu 7th Edition were tremendously successful - and nearly destroyed the company. The article in question is Cthulhu Company Kickstarted Itself to Death, Then This Happened . It discusses how despite making around three quarters of a million dollars between the Kickstarters, as of last June they had around ten thousand dollars in the bank and while Horror on the Orient Express had been printed and shipped, the 7th edition had not. They had massively underestimated international shipping costs. Greg Stafford and Sandy Petersen pooled their shares in the company together to re-attain control o...

Eek there's like too many of these... I'm going to go over some of the games I've played before zero-ing in on a favorite. Once upon a time I had a blast with a D&D 3.5 game in the Eberron campaign setting. I'm going to say that D&D 3.5 was a blast to play. However, in terms of running the game, especially with regard to prep work, I found it a bit cumbersome. I played some D&D 4e and generally enjoyed it but it felt a bit different from other D&D games and we did run into the dreaded "grind" where the outcome a combat is clear several rounds before it ends. I've also done some RuneQuest - the second incarnation of the Mongoose version. It's pretty similar to the current incarnation. I enjoyed the give and take of RuneQuest combat and the straightforward skills system. I've only done one full campaign with that, a rather enjoyable fantasy Vikings meeting Lenape in Manhattan. In more recent games I used Dungeon Crawl Classics...

As a preface to this post it probably makes sense to describe how I view religion in the "real world" as it surely has an impact on how I view it in fictional settings. I was raised a Roman Catholic and I remain one though I suspect if the pope ever had a chance to have a chat with me he'd probably show me the exit in short order. I believe in marriage equality (aka same-sex marriage), believe the church's teachings on the ordination of women and contraception are flawed, and I don't believe Catholics or Christians have an exclusive claim to salvation - to be honest I'm a believer in making this world the best it can be. I am a huge fan of Jesus who spent an awful lot of time telling people to love one another and not much time talking about birth control or homosexuality. Generally speaking if your religion gives you what you need and leads you to a compassionate life I'm fine with it. Heck if your lack of religion takes you there, awesome too. A lot ...