A Rusty Battle Axe Catch-Up Post

Hey, boys and girls.

First of all, thanks to Tim for allowing me to post occasionally on his blog. If he is the host, I must be the parasite. Maybe I’ll change my blog handle to The Rusty Tapeworm.

Secondly, I apologize for my rather abrupt departure from the blogosphere. Yes, I had some concerns about blogging and the public nature of my job, but ultimately the decision to stop blogging came down to time and priorities. Both of my parents have had serious health issues this year and I had some health things, too. On the plus side, I made a decision at the beginning of the year to whip my butt (and the rest of me) into shape and I am well on my way to being healthy, fit, and at my playing weight. However, the better shape I get into, the more time it takes to move to the next level. That, along with some new music endeavors and playing RPGs twice a week most weeks has pretty much consumed my waking hours (and some of the sleeping ones as well). Hence, my decision to cut out the blogging.

I thought about leaving up my old blog without updates, but I had unwisely posted too much related to my identity and my job and so eliminating the actually blog was tied to work concerns. Thanks to the dark magic of the Internet, my posts are out there in the ether forever, but at least the actual blog is gone and it makes it tougher for people to randomly stumble across information.

As Tim has graciously offered Gothridge Manor as a place to post my occasional mindless drivel, I’ll be posting here occasionally.

What I Am Thinking About (RPGs)
Tim, Dwayne and Rob have dropped a few hints that I may up next as GM after we are done with our current adventuring in Rob’s Majestic Wilderlands. I was hoping that Tim would be up next and we’d be doing Hackmaster (4th edition, I think). However, if I am GM and we stick with the general fantasy RPG, I had the following thoughts (and here I am looking for feedback, resources, etc):

1. Continue with our S&W theme and create a campaign that combines fantasy, the Medieval Central Asia (i.e. the Mongols), and some sort of post-apocalyptic thing.
2. Continue with our S&W theme and pick up one of S&W campaign settings on LuLu. I see that there is a growing list. Anybody familiar with any of them? Read any reviews?
3. Same as #1, using Castles & Crusades as the base system (well, my highly house-ruled version of C&C). The plus side is that I already have a lot of the work done. The downside is less sharing of stuff via a blog, PDFs or LuLu if I use C&C.
4. The same as #1 (or #3) using Byzantium as my base motif.
5. Some sort of Underdark that would be connected to the Majestic Wilderlands.

The advantage of all of these, except for #2, is that I don’t have to buy anything. With #2, I’d have the relatively small expense of picking up a campaign book, but that expense could grow, as some of the settings already have supplements. I'd have to do some research and work on the other ideas, but I have a lot of background materials in my library already.

Any thoughts about these options? I'm especially curious to hear from Tim, Rob and Dwayne.

It's good to be back. Thanks, Tim!