sound

My wife played a Fantasy RPG game in the early 70s at Beebe, Arkansas. Carl and I found a fantasy rule set in a war gaming magazine printed for a convention in New England about that time and I thought that could have possibly been the rule set they used in Arkansas. Or ... maybe they used the fantasy appendix from this book. Is the fantasy appendix playable without the entire book? Just curious.

When I enrolled into college many decades ago I had never heard anything about roll playing games. It never occurred to me that it might be a thing. Well other than drama students working hard to play their rolls in front of an audience. I was amazed when I saw my first play there and I was impressed by how hard the students worked to make it as believable as they could.

It takes a lot of courage to play a character with completely different ideas and interests than you have. Imagine standing on the stage and arguing with another actor as to whether you're up to it. Our director overhearing us said there was no time to hunt up replacements and to make the best of it.

Let's just say that was the start of my interest in playing rolls. Roll playing came a little later.

I have confidence that we can navigate this dungeon and find the treasure.

I have confidence that you can. It's me I'm not sure about.

I have confidence that I can. You have to find your own confidence.

That was an enjoyable evening.

Hey Liz what's new?

Great artwork. I really dig the comics.

I like the artwork for the most part but I'm not fond of the fighting.

The Star Trek (original) TV series was my introduction to SF. Then I kind of spread forward and backward from that: the New Wave stuff in one direction (as it was published) and the Golden Age stuff in the other, chiefly Asimov, Heinlein, etc. for that bunch.

Yeah, I was books first and when there was science fiction television I thought, "Oh, wow!" but it rarely lived up to expectations. Except for "The Trouble With Tribbles". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Trouble_with_Tribbles

I was books first in general, but my parents weren't much for SF so I didn't have SF books until after I got exposed to the very notion of it via Star Trek.

I worked at the library shelving books and after I read through all the SF in the children's area I started checking out the Science Fiction they had upstairs. Now I read on my Kindle using Overdrive so still a library patron.

Books have always enthralled me. When I was approaching my teen years A well written story would keep me reading till I fell asleep with the book in my hand. Mother complained about it but she never denied me access to books. We lost my father when I was in 7th grade. It was a traumatic time for us but we survived. When I reached Jr.High School I volunteered to help with the school library. It was a great way to learn just how libraries operate and why books have to be shelved in the right place for things to run smoothly.

I still read at night until I fall asleep. Sometimes I have to reread a page or two in the morning. And what am I reading now? The new N.K. Jemisin Hugo nominee, "The City We Became".

I started in the early nineties so that's 30 years for me.

I started roll playing in the early 70s which was very different than Gary Gygax's D&D. We convened in the Arkansas State Beebe Student Union when we had the time and picked miniatures from whatever was available. The rules were typed on letter paper and were mimeograph or Xerox copies.

Cool!

Beautiful and simple setup. What's the strategy?

The game is a prettier version of the game Gobblet, it turns out. (https://www.boardspace.net/gobblet/english/gobblet_rules.pdf) Each player has three stacks of nesting cylinders (12 pieces total) and the board is 4×4. In alternating turns each player may choose one of:

1. Take the TOP piece of an off-board stack (i.e. the largest) and place it on a blank space.
2. As #1, but place it over (any, regardless of colour) SMALLER piece already on the board.
3. Move any showing piece of that player's colour to a blank space on the board.
4. As #3, but place it over a smaller piece.

The goal is to get four in a row of your own colour: horizontally, vertically, or diagonally. If you touch any piece in play that you can play (on the board, not in your stacks), you *must* play it. If lifting up a piece reveals a line of four of the opposing colour, and your move doesn't stop that line of four from completing, you lose. (In other words there's a memory component to the game.)

It's fast (a long game is 15 minutes) and it's simple to learn. It may be a perfect "we've got a few spare minutes, let's play!" game.

I like the simplicity of the rules.

It's suited to fairly young children, yet has depth that kept two adults playing a few times on the first trial.

Or maybe a grandparent and grandchild. In our hopefully soon post pandemic world.

I'll be playing it with a 13 year old boy sometime this weekend. I'll let you know.

Hi ZDL, how are you? Sounds like you have been busy. We have been doing a little rearranging here. Seems like we do it every spring. Makes the house feel enough different that we enjoy the effort. Hope you have some time to enjoy the rest of the week.

I'm less busy at work now (back to five day weeks) so much more busy over weekends finally. :D

I'm looking forward to warmer weather just not hot weather. That being said I cant wait to to see our flowers blooming all over our yard. Spring begins here tomorrow.

Casting spells is difficult at it's best. It's impressive you can do it with your eyes.

Things are OK. You?

Getting there. The older I get the longer things take. Hope you are doing fine.

Well, 2020 was a year of two months of terror followed by 9 months of 6-day workweeks, so glad to see the back end of that year going away.

2020 was a year of staying home for us.

Liz is pretty astute about gaming. I appreciate her approach and her attitude.

Yeah, and she has opinions too.

Great job on these guys!

And thanks for the little houses.

I like to write non combat modules or combat light modules where there is a possibility of combat but it isn't baked in.

Fortunately Vivian likes to play non combat.

For many players the combat is the game. I'm with you. I avoid combat. And when I do combat I prefer tactics, plan B, tricks and general sneakiness.

But if I'm at a table where the players love combat. Roll for initiative.

Thanks

I had my Great Awakening in the early '80s, and that actually led me away from the D&D family because so many people not only just assumed combat, but assumed combat to the death with no quarter, no fleeing: just grinding down hit points to 0 on one side or the other then moving on to the next hit point grind.

And D&D doesn't have to be played that way but it is common. And more common in 5e with more powerful characters out of the box and death saves.

Yes, I know it didn't have to be. :( My "great awakening" was the realization that there was more to life than rolling d20+d<damage> non-stop. But I couldn't find others who thought that way in the AD&D circles I frequented, so I moved on to DragonQuest (where I knew players who did non-combat).

As a DM who got involved in the early days of roll playing I tried to prohibit the idea that if you were in combat it must end with somebody dead. The thought that maybe this situation could be resolved by talking through it rather than hacking and slashing wasn't usually employed. I often docked points from those who just wanted to kill without any other choices made available. Real life sometimes seems to follow that route now and then and I think using it as entertainment is just asking for increasing bad choices in our youth.

I think the problem was that a lot of early role-players stepped into it from the world of war gaming. (I didn't.) I'm positive a lot of the people I gamed with in the early days just viewed the characters as complicated playing pieces to optimize the movements of, not as characters in a setting.

And that's the kind of combat I like to play. Where you use strategy and work as a team to win the combat. If that means they run away or surrender you still win. But I prefer avoiding combat most of all and as a player try to roll dice as least as I can.

Yeah, figuring out how not to use all your resources in one fight so you have enough to accomplish your goal. Less fighting leads to less time wasting healing up and going back to town empty handed.

Especially if there is a time element. You must retrieve the potion before the full moon to keep your friend from turning into a werewolf ... Can't waste time fighting and healing. Let's figure out a way to sneak around those kobolds.

Time pressure is a GM tool more GMs should use more often.

I agree and I build it into my modules when I can. For instance the party was tasked with gathering medicine and with the people in the neighboring village sick they needed it by tomorrow. In my latest quest the party has to get a branch off the ancestor tree in a magic forest with about a bajillion hills and a big old tree at the top of every one. The catch was the ancestor tree glowed with a fey glow when the moon was full. So you know that only happens every 28 days so they had to be in the right place at the right time.

Winter is coming.

Winter is only breathing hard here. :-/ I miss snow.

It snowed here last week. But it didn't stick. Anymore we go through a lot of winters without snow. And then there was the ice storm where everybody lost electric for weeks.

Fey fantasy has a different feel than medieval fantasy but still the two worlds interface quite well. In the "Lyonesse Trilogy" Jack Vance writes of a medieval civilization with enchanted woods where the fairies live. The heroine, Madouc, is a changling who is half fey by birth.

I read it but it's been years ago. Vance is one of my favorite writers.

This is a rather head scratching pic for me. The robin seems to be perfectly calm or maybe it is just so stunned and perplexed it can't move.

The robin is ensorcelled by the necklace.

I see. Well that explains it I reckon.

There is rather a lot going on in this picture...

Hi guys, good to see more new faces. Welcome aboard.

Thanks!

This is cool. Like a big rock show.

This group does recreations of ancient works, new works done in ancient styles, modern-style orchestration with ancient instruments, and off-the-wall stuff like one of their orchestral pieces where a didgeridoo is a prominent instrument.

I love them!

Oriental music often wings off into interesting combinations of instruments and self expression. I believe this is a good thing and a way to add form to sound.

I hate you.

My granddaughter told me that.

Except she said sometimes he laughs.

We've got a whole thing about how "I don't get it" is a punch line.

No kidding every kid got to experience that one.

Ivan Bilibin https://www.wikiart.org/...an-bilibin/all-works

I think the goat is jealous of the wizards beard.

I'm jealous of them both.

There is a point to this, gaming-wise, that I'll expound upon after laughing at some of your suggestions.

This falls into the realm of "lost inventions" and those are a treasure trove of ideas for gaming.

Celery square dancing.

a lamp pull

Where are you going? How did Tango hurt his leg?

I'm heading to some place called Birkenstock. Not real sure where it is exactly. The guy that gave me directions told me to get on this trail and follow it till I got to the town and then to ask for the local blacksmith. Tango stepped into a hole and fell. I was sure his leg was broken but after I examined it I decided he had just injured his hoof.

I know that blacksmith. His name is Burt.

Well that's convenient. Can you give me directions to his shop? Or does he call it his forge?

His forge is in Birkenstock. You can't miss his forge. Unless you miss Birkenstock.

Do you want to run one?

Maybe

Jiminy Crickets Sound! I'm in the same boat.

I managed without it so I guess I managed without help.

I'd love to help, but my get-up-and-go got up and went. :-/

Ari, curious as usual, walked over to the bed and began poking around with a walking cane she uses for many purposes including prodding things she doesn't want to touch with her hands. When she lifted the pillow at one end it puffed out a cloud of mist that had Ari jumping back quickly.

What kind of glamour is that? Lets leave till it dissipates we don't need any hocus pocus to deal with right now.

Caper wants to know what it smells like. Seemed like a bad idea at the time.

I hope the little guy doesn't poke the big guy in the belly and waste all that beer.

sound and I both read the Fritz Lieber and Jack Vance fantasies that were models for many D&D ideas and quests. I also enjoyed Andre Norton, Ursula K. LeGuinn, and L. Sprague de Camp. The floor is open for authors that may have influenced your quests or your idea about what DnD is all about.

I read many books by Anne McCaffrey,Roger Zelazny, Michael Moorcock, Marion Zimmer Bradley, CJ Cherryh, Larry Niven and Poul Anderson and on and on........

Outstanding artwork.

Nahhh, never.

That's some amazing work I'd be in cardiac arrest in less than an hour there.

Looking forward to reading the books.

I've read them. All 14 or 15!

Will this be the next Game Of Thrones?

That will do it every time.

We have family game in 5e tonight. I posted about it in the 5e group. We recently had a special family game with Wendy DMing for her first time. We went through an enchanted forest and then fought our way into an abandoned castle. Wendy is 9.

Here's a photo

If you open the photo by clicking on it you can see Gamer+ up on my computer screen.

Caption - Kier, Megan, Vivian, Wendy(front)

We have gamer friends in town so we may squeeze in some RPG time.

My 30th tomorrow, unlikely any rpgs, even though I wish! But getting together with friends tonight, so probably some board games at least.

I started playing campaigns so I put staying alive at a high priority. Nothing wrong with that. But at North Texas playing Discos and Dragons I played a low level hobbit with adventure fever in over his head. I always charged in. I even went straight for a Giants ankles with my ax. I died, of course. But it was fun.

I don't think it's possible for the player's skills not to bleed into the character's skills. So embrace your personal skills in your characters. Play characters that have your interests and knowledge. Then your skills will mesh invisibly with your character's skills and the fact that your character inevitably has your knowledge will seem natural.

Good point!

And when all of the above happens you can identify with your character and your character becomes I rather than my character. That is the immersive power of role playing games.

I was deeply immersed in my first character and still kind of miss her.

You can always bring her back.

I played Caper some time in the recent past. I think in the mega dungeon at North Texas RPG Con.

It's a thought, Ari may rise again.

That's pretty impressive. It's well executed and eye catching.

I downloded a better scan with more pixels for the T Shirt. I would like to be able to make the black transparent.

Like this? Much better!

I want one.