Gothridge Manor

Which Trees of the Forest?

2012-01-29T17:41:00.001-05:00

I've been messing with maps a lot lately and I have several variations of trees to depict forests. Each one I like and dislike. So out it goes to everyone to see what others think. I guess this is my lame version are my tree hot or not. 'Puffy Tree' version. One of my long standard forest version. This one is outlined with a thicker dark green Sharpie then a color pencil used to fill it in

Sleestak Spartacus

2012-01-29T12:13:00.000-05:00

Normally Enik is dressed in his snazzy orange metallic smock. But since this is the start of new Spartacus season he was caught wearing this. Of course you do Enik. For those interested in seeing the first episode here is the link to Starz.

Game Plans Hampered by Sickness

2012-01-28T18:15:00.000-05:00

Usually I don't do posts on non related gaming posts so I'll loop around and duct tape this at the end to some sort of gaming relevance. Maybe not. I've been sick all week and this weekend its gotten worse. Don't mean to complain, but it is really getting on my nerves right now. Next week my Monday night group gets restarted after a two week hiatus and then the second session for my newbie

What Makes You Support an OSR Product...or Not?

2012-01-26T08:20:00.000-05:00

I've been having a discussion with a few other OSR bloggers about the reasons why someone would support an OSR product or why they wouldn't. Some of the factors that came up were: cost of the product saturation of the product quality of the product Other factors, more personal, that come into play are: buyer's current financial situation like or dislike of the author personal interest in the

Villians, Part 8

2012-01-25T07:16:00.004-05:00

Mallard 'deadpan' Malkin, squatted next to the creek shoveling dirt into his pan. He swooshed around the muddy water to wash away the stone, mud and crud to check for gold. A few glittering golden specks came into a view and a pinky-nail sized nugget. He nodded and grinned, only a few of his teeth remained. Just as he filled another pan he heard the snap of one of his traps then heard a man

Weird Adventures has Arrived, Bug Approved

2012-01-24T21:34:00.001-05:00

I've been waiting for nearly a year for Trey to complete his Weird Adventures and tonight, the waiting has ended. Bug wasn't even alive a year ago, but she endorses Weird Adventures. So I had to get one for me and one for her. My night is set, to read some of what Trey (of From the Sorcerer's Skull blog) has to offer and then scour his blog and print another booklet of relevant posts that

Word Verification Off

2012-01-24T07:03:00.000-05:00

I've been meaning to do this for a while, turn off word verification. I know it's a pain and I'll keep it off as long as I don't start getting hit with a lot of spam. No more reading words that look like they were written by a drunk person with a good vocabulary. No more losing your comment because of an error during the verification. And no more time wasters developed because some wank

Map Time! 3

2012-01-23T11:51:00.002-05:00

I just noticed I have the Coven Forest in two places. Not sure what happened there. With this map I used a picture program to add the words and twist them around. I like the way it turned out overall. This is what it looked like before.

This is How I Think

2012-01-23T07:55:00.008-05:00

So after Bug slaughtered a good portion of my Sharpies I went out and bought a 24-pack. Whisk asks "Why did you get the big pack? I thought you didn't need that many colors for your map." I don't, but my strategy is this. Bug doesn't know that. The other Sharpies are decoys to keep her away from my blues and blacks and browns. I will put out a purple and weird gray and one I have no

No, You Can't be the Cow

2012-01-22T14:41:00.000-05:00

Okay, so the newbie game was last Wednesday. Out of the six of them, one had played once, five had heard of the game and as I said in a previous post, two of them had four, 20-sided dice. I had a very newbie group. I created the characters ahead of time and went over what some of the stats meant. I gave them a very stripped down version. The spell caster got spell cards so before we

Sleestak Sunday

2012-01-22T08:43:00.002-05:00

Another Sleestak Sunday has come around again. This week has been interesting. Wednesday was the all newbie group which I will post on either tomorrow or tonight. It went well. And couple of days ago we got the initial rules for 5E D&D. I need to go over the NDA before I can say anything. We are setting up a group to start testing it. My initial impression is 'I want to see how this

Participant Experience Points

2012-01-21T20:00:00.001-05:00

I've been a big fan of the Digital Orc blog and now I am going to blatantly rip off an idea from his blog. Experience points for those who comment. A running total for the year along the left side. Why? Because I like the idea of it and when I do give-a ways, that is something I would like to do more of, or contests or whatever, maybe those with the higher scores get some kind of bonus. I

Completed My Collection

2012-01-21T12:05:00.000-05:00

One of my favorite book series is Thieves World. They also released a series of six graphic novels. I bought the first three when they first came out, but never could find the last three. I kept forgetting about them then recently I took another look at them, hopped on ebay and scored the remaining three I needed. If you are a fan of the series I highly recommend them. Tim Sale's

Map Time 2!

2012-01-20T21:56:00.002-05:00

Another map drawn while I watched Netflix. After a long ass week at work its nice just to sit down and sketch a map and color. I did another color map. Instead of doing 'fluffy' wooded areas, just made green shapes. Not to be confused the with green ground shapes. In this offering we have specialized little village. These are horse wranglers who capture wild horses in the wilderness and

GM Questionnaire

2012-01-19T22:27:00.001-05:00

Zak posted a DM questionnaire so here are my answers. A little late. 1. Single invention most proud of? I'm know I didn't 'invent it', but creating micro cultures. The first one I remember doing is creating a culture on a slaver ship. It had its own rules, hidden lore and a ruthless god (the slaver) they all feared. 2. Last time I DMed? The 9th of January and have a newbie game lined up

Favorite Question of the Day

2012-01-17T21:21:00.000-05:00

Tomorrow is the newbie game and two of them approached me looking worried and asked. "Between both of us we have four 20-sided dice. Is that enough?"

Quick Glance at Player Backgrounds

2012-01-17T08:17:00.001-05:00

Through the weekend and last night I was working on backgrounds for the newbie players. What I try to do with players of any caliber is give them a grounding to start from. A little of where they have been and who some of their friends are and if they have an rivals or out right enemies. The great thing about giving them this at the beginning of a game is they see you've taken the time to

Map Time!

2012-01-16T20:18:00.001-05:00

While I sat at my kitchen table tonight I created this map for the heck of it. It is heavily influenced by Matt Jackson's technique over at his ..lampus calumni.. blog. I've been really digging his maps lately and I wanted to do one. Mine is not nearly as good. My well sucks and that glump of ink in front of the bottom house is supposed to be a set of stairs. Fat marker. But other than

Housing Cleaning at the Manor

2012-01-16T09:54:00.001-05:00

Since I have the day off I've been going through some blogs I don't get to read all that often. Some blogs who post while I'm at work or asleep are hard to keep up with, but that's what weekends and holidays are for. I was adding some blogs I thought looked good. I'm not sure why I didn't have scott's blog already on my roll, but that has been corrected. Stocking the Dungeon scottz's blog.

Sleestak Wear Sunday

2012-01-15T07:09:00.000-05:00

I can't tell you how bad I want these t-shirts, especially the Enik one. Love it. Understated. These are the kinda shirts I like to wear so people will ask me questions and I will randomly make up shit. I have got to get this one! Hmm, they kinda look like condom heads. On black this would be sweet. Nothing beats those crappy decals where when you jump on the gym floor a

Using All My Game Systems

2012-01-14T17:20:00.000-05:00

To flatten my battle map. It's been rolled up for a long time and needs squished flat. Its a good one. One of those vinyl ones with hexes on one side, graph on the reverse. And one of those ones you don't use dry erase on, you have to use those overhead projector markers. I learned that one the hard way even though it said it on a little piece of paper I threw away when I bought it. It's

Newbie Character Build

2012-01-14T12:00:00.001-05:00

Last night me and the wife had a snow night where we stayed in and listened to some old CDs (featuring Meatloaf, Stevie Nicks, Eagles and even managed to tolerate a little Purple Rain from Prince). She was in the kitchen making bagels while I hand wrote the characters. I was planning on using a character sheet, but forgotten how much I dislike them. None of them seemed to have what I wanted.

Newbie Game All Set

2012-01-12T22:38:00.001-05:00

Okay, enough about the sucking. I've got a date, time and place for my newbie group. Next Wednesday at 5pm and the very cool thing is my place of work has a nice conference room and are allowing me to use it. In fact they are excited about me running a game. Right now I think there are six players which is about all I want to run. Especially new players. I've decided to use AD&D for the

Sucking is a Relative Term

2012-01-12T07:55:00.001-05:00

Yesterday the Rhetorical Gamer blog referenced my Just Above Suck in a post called I Don't Wanna Suck! (loved the title) I can appreciate the sentiment not to suck, especially if your expectation is to be a world changing hero. But I think she (I am only assuming the poster is female because she mentioned writing a romantic fantasy rpg, so I am just playing the odds) doesn't understand how an

Just Above Suck

2012-01-11T08:23:00.000-05:00

Yesterday I had to have a little chat with my newbs. They were expressing what kind of characters they would like to play. Of course the two girls wanted to play elves. On said, "I want to be an archer, like Legolas from Lord of the Rings. The other wanted to be a elf mage Gandalf character. And one of the guys said he wanted to be a badass dwarf named Clive who could cleave monsters in half

There's a Lot of Lubrication Going On

2012-01-10T12:34:00.002-05:00

Last night, game night, we started out where the players had cleared the upper level of the dungeon they were in. They went into a cavern and found some interesting magic items. Including two jars of healing salve. So for the rest of the night the lubrication jokes flew. "Why don't you lube up and backstab the monster?" And all the varients. We had a good time. Even without the lube. The

5E D&D In the Word of Tom

2012-01-09T11:52:00.001-05:00

Tom Doolan has a very good post over on his blog, in the Words of Tom. Another post about Wizards announcing a new addition to D&D. I guess they are calling it 5th edition. I like his honest take on it. I don't have a dog in this fight. If they put new version out cool. That always stirs a ton of reknewed interest in the RPG industry. But if it stinks, no big deal for me. I plan on

Newbies to the Hex Crawl

2012-01-09T07:16:00.000-05:00

In a week or so I plan to initiate a handful of people into the world of the hex crawl. Some of them have a little experience with RPGs, but very limited. Most of their experience is with card games. On average the players are 15 to 20 years younger than me which makes me feel fucking old. But, it should be interesting if my GMing techniques can translate to the initiates. One of the

Scroungers

2012-01-06T22:50:00.000-05:00