HerosQuest

After I noticed that there was a plan to re-release hero's quest, I dug out my box.  Of course Like most people my mini's were used for D&D eventually, but erything still remains.  I had the forethought to ziplock bag all of the parts :) woot.  I'm re-reading the rules this morning, may give this a go in the next few weeks.   I also have dragonstrike & dragons quest games, that had nice boards that could also be used for herosquest, which could be neat! 

I can`t believe the amount of time we spent playing that game.  (herosquest) I think our natural progression was the following. 

Fighting Fantasy Books
Herosquest
Advanced Fighting Fantasy
And then finally AD&D 

Of course we played a bit of Dragonstrike (which as everyone knows was horrid!) but had some great mini`s.  And Dragonsquest, which was basic d&d in a box with some nice metal mini`s which I still have! thankfully.  Although I painted some of these horribly. 

I think I may just pull out Herosquest and have a go, could be lots of fun! 

This came about because of a post by +Erik Tenkar http://www.tenkarstavern.com/2013/12/did-i-mention-that-heroquest-25th.html

Rambling...

I find my biggest challenge when it comes to the campaign world is living, breathing cities and villages (of any genre). I believe you could be crowned king of rpg publishing if you produced city, and village sourcebooks which were devoid of tedious backstory, but littered with briefly described npc's, sketched economics, potential internal conflicts, anything which thoughtful PC's could exploit. +Jay Murphy  - posted this over at a disucssion that +Venger Satanis started on Google +

This is an extremely interesting idea! And I think would be worth some time and effort to come up with something like this.  As to whether I can find some time I dunno.  But something to think about anyways. 

The start of the thread, the following question was posed by +Venger Satanis 
I'm looking for articles, blogs, or whatever on fully realizing campaign settings.  How to crank things up to 11.  For example, it takes more than desert, lack of metal, and environmentally toxic sorcery to get Dark Sun.  What are the missing elements?  What gives that setting cohesion?  

Please post your favs below... or your own ideas on this topic.  Thanks!

https://plus.google.com/u/0/communities/107422815813208456454/stream/5bdebd97-da1a-4824-828f-cef5270853c9

Xmas Gift!

Well my Xmas gift went over very well! I printed out Basic Fantasy, and a few of the modules for my cousin in law, as well as some sexy dice! He even got a percentile dice, which i know have to go and grab one as well.  The one thing we realized when buying dice is even though they may look  cool with different colors, its smart to grab some that are easily readable!  I have a set of almost camo ones with red numbers that are so super hard to read! Anyways, we got him some semi black ones with red writing.  :)

After he opened it there was a chorus of (ala Homer Simpson) NERD! from his brother.  I loved that lol.

In other news since I'm currently on vacation I've started writing a lot! I had some serious writers block the last few weeks, that has some how dissipated which is great! What I'm doing is just handwriting things.  for too long I was writing stuff with other people in mind, which was kinda hemming me in.  I've started writing a new campaign for my players with some very easy goals for the start.  First things first everyone is starting off at 2nd level to avoid TPK.  The PC's are based in a very small farming town (ala the shire).  The first adventure is going to be a forest crawl, which should be fun.  I'm planning on drawing maps today of the town (i drew one, but planning on redrawing anyways) and forest.  For awhile there I was thinking too big, what I plan to do is to setup about 3 or 4 options of adventures that they can take.  And then lay them out for them.  The other thing I want to do is not write too much about what is supposed to happen in a specific encounter, which will leave me a bit more leeway as far as role playing is concerned.

Once and if they get thru the 4 adventures, I'll do some more work on the actual setting.  Hopefully it will start to take shape in my mind and their's as we play thru.

 

Cartographer's Guide to the Creatures of Eira

"The Cartographer's Guide to the Creatures of Eira" is 27 pages of new creatures to populate your fantasy gaming world. Compatible with most OSR rule systems "The Cartographer's Guide to the Creatures of Eira" offers 43 new and mostly unique creatures to beguile, threaten and torment your players with!

What you have before you is a preview or alpha build of a book that I hope to produce as fully and professionally as my hobbyist hands can. Unfortunately to do such I require the funds to hire good artists (like Theo Evens who produced the two figures on the cover to this preview) and layout editors. That's were this preview edition comes in, to help fund the creation of a full and print-worthy version of this book “The Cartographer's Guide to the Creatures of Eira”.

This preview edition is a pay-what-you-want title, all funds created through the sale of this preview edition (as well as all my affiliate credits) will be going fully toward hiring and paying artists to create images for my creatures, cover art, and layout. Through out the process the preview edition will be updated with up to 10 more creatures and possibly some art previews.

When the final version is ready everyone who has purchased the preview version of this title will get a 50% off coupon for the full version of “The Cartographer's Guide to the Creatures of Eira”

I want to thank everyone who has picked this up. Both for being interested in my creations and for helping this title be fully realized!

Thank you!

Johua De Santo – Genius Loci Games

GRAB IT HERE! 

What is your preferred method for rolling up a Character?

Normally I do the following, 4D6, keep the highest number.  I try to do it order as much as possible, Strength first, etc.  If I'm trying to create a specific class of character that has a minimum, when I get to that number if I don't roll something extraordinary, or if I roll say a 8 and the minimum is 9, I usually bump it up to the minimum.  On occasion I will subtract from another stat to make that work.

What's your method?

The reason I'm posting this was that I grabbed the basic fantasy rules the other day to roll up a character that was 3rd level, and it took me seriously like 10 mins, love that about OSR stuff.

Role play it out!

Was thinking about dice mechanics this afternoon and what occurred to me was for those instances when you don't really need the dice to resolve something, its probably smarter to role play out the situation.   I"m guessing this is highly obvious to most of you OSR guys/gals out there, but it occurred to me nonetheless and I decided to blog about it.  Partially because that is something that's missing from the games I've ran so far.  So rather than consider a difficulty class or a proficiency check for something, I'm going to do my best to say "Well explain to me what your planning on doing".  As to wether its talking to a NPC or trying something that's off the beaten path.  I'm just rambling at this point.

its funny how your mind wanders

I was listening to Roll For Initiative podcast this afternoon, and I starting thinking about Gloomwood module that I semi released (unfinished), I had an idea about taking a few of the little adventures I've started and putting them all together.  I may just sit and try and work this all out.  One was a rehash of The Hunt For Valathune, which will make a perfect ending to the bandits in Gloomwood.  Also there was the town of Debinshire that I originally posted at the start of this blog, with the Mayor (retired thief).  Its all coming together!

+Joshua De Santo just adding you so that you catch this.  Hopefully I'll have it cooked soon lol