Presents

My modest haul of Christmas gifts this year.

Hex Kit Again

I've been fooling around with Hex Kit some more.  It has hex numbering and a labeling feature.  It also has a feature that if you hover the cursor over a hex the notes that you've added will pop up in a box.  For example, if you hover over The Keep of the Wolf King it will display, "The mountain fastness of the Wolf King.  He uses the keep as a base to raid the surrounding countryside."

Hex Kit also has a "fog of war" feature that allows you to hide hexes if you want to provide a map for your players.  If I were starting my players on this example map I could give them this version to reflect their limited knowledge of the landscape.  Clicking on the maps give you a better idea what they look like.

I'm rather enjoying this still.  It could definitely meet my simple needs.

Hex Kit

Bundle of Holding has the mapping program Hex Kit in one of their bundles right now.  Ignoring everything else in the bundle it's going for about 2/3 of its regular price right now.  So I grabbed it.  It's an interesting little program, easy to use.  It comes with a basic black and white tile set and there are other color set you can purchase separately.  Here's my first 5 minute effort.

Rome, Mycenae and Post-Apocalyptic Fantasy Settings

When people talk about fallen civilizations it is often Rome that is discussed and in a way it is only natural since it led to the Middle Ages which many games are loosely set in.  However, even with the collapse of the Roman Empire, many of its institutions, much of its culture and echoes of its language survived.  Heck, its actual language did survive amongst the educated and in the Church.  It was also remembered and held up as an example to emulate.  So much so that over 300 years after the western portion of the Empire fell, a Frankish king was declared the Roman emperor by the Pope.  To top it off the eastern portion of the empire survived for another 1000 years.

I ran across a several articles lately about the D&D and other fantasy RPGs being set in a post-apocalyptic world.  Here are two of them:   "The Implied Apocalypse of Dungeons and Dragons"  and "The World Ended, and Then We Got on With Our Lives."

This idea intrigues me and makes a lot of sense.  After all, why are there a bunch of ruins and relics laying around?  More powerful precursors whose scraps the present people are scavenging and whose memory they are trying to live up to.  It is great fun to play in a setting like this.


When I think about fallen civilizations and what came after I like to think of the Mycenaeans.  Their civilization collapsed and disappeared in a relatively short period of time.  The monarchies and their system of government were destroyed, in fact even the word for king changed.  Major population centers were abandoned and even many villages were depopulated.  Large populations emigrated overseas and population as a whole dropped. The way of life changed.  Wealth disappeared.  The dialect changed in many areas. Much of the past was forgotten.  The ruins left behind were mysterious and many myths were attached to them

This is a world ripe for adventuring.

Games I'm Looking Forward To

I'm currently looking forward to two games.

The first is the second edition of The Hero's Journey from James Spahn.  This isn't just a fix the typos and a made a few adjustments second edition.  This is a complete overhaul to better meet Mr. Spahn's vision that he was trying to meet with the first edition but didn't quite reach.  You can read the specifics about the why in this blog post, The Hero's Journey, Second Edition: Why?  You can read more about the changes on his blog Halfling's Luck.

The second game I'm interested in is Sword of Cepheus.  This is a sword & sorcery version of the Cepheus Engine science fiction rules.  Which is based on Classic Traveller.  I love Traveller of the little black books with its lifepath character generation and I love sword & sorcery so I can't wait to see the results.



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Lawful Doesn't Mean Good

This is from the blog Treasure Hunters HQ.  It is an excellent example of lawful not being good drawn from history.

https://treasurehuntershq.blogspot.com/2019/08/lawful-doesnt-mean-good.html

50 Years Ago

The Hero's Journey 2nd Edition

James Spahn is going to do a second edition of The Hero's Journey.  The interesting and fun changes the made to S&W White Box really hit a sweet spot for me.  I can't wait to see what he does with the new edition.  You can read about it at his blog Halfling's Luck.  Oh, and he has the cover art posted.  I really like it.

Spring Break

Last week was spring break for my boys so we decided to head south and visit Portland, OR.  Specifically, Powell's Books and Guardian Games.  Now, we've been to Powell's before and it is a

The RPG shelf at Powell's

booklover's delight.  If you are not familiar with Powell's it is a four story building that takes up an entire city block and is full of books.  Books of every imaginable kind.  A bibliophile's heaven.  I could spend days there if I had the time and the money.

I had never been to Guardian Games before.  It is the largest game store I have ever been in.  A huge amount of board games.  A large selection of RPGs.  A bunch of other stuff I didn't have time to really look at, including a corner just for Legos.

The board games shelves at Guardian Games.  Can you find the hidden people?

Between the two stores, beside the requisite history books, I purchased the core rules of Dungeon Crawl Classics and a used boxed set of Adventures in the East Mark.

It was a fun trip.  The boys enjoyed themselves and we got to visit two great stores.

The Legacy Edition

My box came today with my Legacy Edition box of The Fantasy Trip!  So excited to start playing around with it!

First Full TFT Character

I didn't own the In the Labyrinth rules back when I was a kid.  So I have only made character using the Melee and Wizard rules.  Even then I preferred warriors to wizards so I mostly built heros.  Thus, this is my first full build using the full TFT rules.

Marcus Valerius Corvus

St 11

DX 12 (8)

IQ 9

MA 6

Short sword 2-1

Javelin 1-1

Dagger 1-1

Chainmail / Stops 5

Lg Shield/    Hits

Talents:

Sword, Shield

Carpenter, Literacy, Pole Weapons*

Alertness

*Edit:  With input from Yongi on MeWe I decided to replace Thrown Weapons with Pole Weapons.  He pointed out that without Pole Weapons Marcus would be throwing his javelin using 4 dice.  Thanks Yongi.

The OSR News

James Smith, of the "Dreams of Mythic Fantasy" blog, writes a weekly column called The OSR News.  It's a roundup of newly published products, reviews, blog post spotlights and news.

It really helpful, cool and he puts a lot of work into it.  You can find the posts here.

Descending Armor Class

You learn something new everyday.  I didn't realize that this was the origin of descending armor class in original D&D.  It's explained here at the Playing at the World blog.

Originally it was intended that you needed to roll 20 - AC.  So AC 2 needed an 18 or higher.