My Dark Lord Starter Kit Arrived

I was eating lunch the other day and this guy decided to hang out.  Apparently my Dark Lord Starter Kit arrived.  You get a random animal familiar, mine was a black bird.  And in following weeks I will receive a reusable curse, a black cloak and a how-to evil laugh step-by-step instruction.  And I can cancel at any time.

Picture Inspiration

Just wanted to share one of the many pictures I've been collecting to help inspire the campaign I'm working on.  This one is for an adventure.  Gave me a great idea. 

Off to work.  Have a great one folks.  Tonight I write this encounter.  I love having something to look forward to when writing.

Random Picture Wednesday

I got no post.  So when all else fails, put up a weird photo.  I like this photo.  I know nothing about it.  And I do believe that is a swastika on his button.  

Jeremiah just provided me the identity of the photographer.   David Pritchard, I liked to his site.  He's got some great b&w photos. 

Shelf-by-Shelf Extravaganza

It's ironic that I had planned to do a shelf-by-shelf photo extravaganza of my game shelf last weekend then everyone one started doing it.  Ivy and I changed the living room around and I got it a bit more organized and wanted to take a few snap shots of it.  I finally got around to doing just that.  I have most of my gaming stuff on a single shelf.  A good size one, but it all fits and with a little lubricant can fit more stuff in there.  The only two books not currently on the shelf were my S&W Complete Rules and ASE 2-3 cause I just got it and was reading it.

While not as impressive as some collector's I think it represents my gaming history fairly well.  I'll be going through the shelves top left to bottom left and then right top to bottom right.

Pathfinder to the left of me Hackmaster to my right.  The purple box is a Brave Halfling Box of the purple worm and it contains my Crawls, Loviatars, WMLPs and an issue of Delve! inside.  It's getting pretty full so I may need to get another or find a better way to store them.  I've only played Pathfinder once, but really love the books.  The only Adventure Path I have is the King Maker.  HackMaster is such a blast to read, but wow, very aggravating to make a character.  HackMaster basic I haven't tried to play yet.  The Hacklopedia is an amazing looking book.

My oldest shelf.  Those AD&D books and the modules and Judge's Guilds were pretty much bought as they were printed back in the 70s and 80s.  Then I have D&D 3.0, but never got the 3.5 edition rules.  We played 3.0 a couple of times, but it never caught on with us.  And then all the way to the right my still very new, very lightly used 4th edition books.  I only addition core book I purchased was the 2nd Dungeon Master book.  And that was when Borders was still alive and handing out 30% coupons.

The box set shelf.  I think the oldest box set I have is Shadow World.  The T&T on top of it has a bunch of adventure signed by Ken St. Andre and a mixture of other T&T things I've gotten through the years.  Thieves' World is one of the box sets I've always wanted and finally gotten.  In the center are the Wizard's Compendium volumes 1-4.  I searched high and low for these bad boys.  I like the idea of spells being treasure or a precious commodity.  The other books on the inside are my graph paper Piccadilly books and sketch books.

On the left are books a reference quite a bit.  When I run or develop an adventure I like to have that tough of realism in it.  To the right are manuscripts I've worked on.  In the middle is the S&W White Box from BHP and my bulging Muchkin Box.

These binder are FULL of PDFs I've purchased.  I was burning up the bandwidth over at RPGNow when I first discovered it.  On top is the vinyl mat for gaming.  It still pretty new since I rarely get to use it.  And then beneath the mat is different size art pads for my maps.

More reference material.  But also this is the tallest bookshelf I have so my tallest books go here.  The Strange Stories and Amazing Facts books was the very first book I ever got.  I believe I got it when I was five.  I still look in it today and find stuff I missed.  So much cool stuff in there.

This is my main OSR shelves.  I believe C&C was the first retro clone I got interested in and then it went from there.

Another one of my old shelves.  My Pendragon and Citybook collection live here.  And a mixture of Slayer Guides, Harn, WoD and Role Aids.  This is the shelf I want to 'complete'.  I eventually want to get the Pendragons I am missing and Citybook 6.

The first of my two GURPS shelves.  The binders are full of PDFs.  My group got involved in GURPS just before 2nd edition started.

Final shelf is the rest of my GURPS collection.  Personally speaking I think GURPS has the best overall gaming supplements.  HARN is up there, but GURPS is more my level and cover ay more areas.

Hope I didn't bore you too much from my Game Shelf tour.

Finding Nicholas Kramer

How many of you know the name?  Probably not one of the more popular names, but its in one of the most famous movies, Night of the Living Dead.  In the beginning of the movie Barbara, and her brother Johnny go to the cemetery.  Johnny utters some of the most famous words in horror movie history, "They're coming to get you Barbara."  Soon mayhem ensues and Johnny becomes lunch while Barbara hides behind a tombstone to watch.

Nicholas Kramer's tombstone.  Ivy and took a day trip to the Evans City Cememtary.  This is where the cemetery scenes were filmed.  It's been one of those trips we've been wanting to do for a while. 

It took a long time for us to find Nicholas Kramer.  But we did finally find the famous tombstone of Nicholas Kramer.

This is me making scary hands behind the marker.  Ivy said my right hand was scarier than my left.  What can I say, I'm not a profession scary hand maker.  It was a cool day trip, weather was great and the company was the best.

As a bonus we took a few pictures of the closed keeper house.

Pretty big place.  All of it was locked up except the door to the left had a hole in it.

So we took a picture of the inside.  I thought it was pretty creepy and very cool.

This keeper's house screams out to be included in my Rural PA segments in The Manor.  

*Sleestak Sunday will resume next Sunday.

Picture Inspiration for Writing

Here's a series of pictures I recently found that I plan to use to develop a few ideas I have swimming in my head.   Some locations, people and events I've got planned for the future issues of The Manor.