Baron reviews, Music Reviews and mapping!

BLUE BARON
I recently received some reviews from Age Of Dusk on the blue baron series.   As well I received a review on one of the last ever recordings that I made (in my professional life).  I'd like to thank Prince of Nothing for reviewing both of the baron releases!

An invitation from the blue baron review: 
https://princeofnothingblogs.wordpress.com/2019/03/03/review-an-invitation-from-the-blue-baron-blueholme-too-many-cooks/

Excerpt:  The style, theme, format and content of each room is an incoherent mess that could have been averted by giving everyone clearer guidelines by which to hand in their submissions.

Shane's thoughts: Absolutely! I suppose I could have done a bit more editing on the whole thing.  Everyone of the writers in both adventures were able to see what each other were writing.  (not quite sure if that's a point per se....)

Return of the blue baron review: 
https://princeofnothingblogs.wordpress.com/2019/03/10/review-the-return-of-the-blue-baron-blueholme-second-times-the-charm/

Excerpt:  There are two irritants. The room numbering is, begging Mr. Ward’s pardon, utter dogshit, with players entering in room number 3. and rooms with only one number apart being found on opposite sides of the dungeon. The decision to simply start at the left side of the map and then number rooms in rows from left to right makes it harder to get a feel for what rooms belong in what area. Numbering should go by proximity.

Shanes Thoughts:  I normally number this way.  I agree that it's a good point about putting rooms together that are "connected" as far as story is concerned.  At least as far as the text goes.  When we started this, I basically put the 2 maps in google drive and people started picking rooms and went to town.  Technically speaking I could have sat and edited rooms and moved them to different places (re numbered) as far as thematically similar rooms, or ones that were connected story wise.  Whatever the case that's good information to know.

All in all I've very happy with both reviews, they point out all the good points, bad points (things to work on) and that IMHO is gold.  

You can grab "the invitation from the blue baron" here. and "The return of the blue baron" here. and the POD here.

Check out Goblin Henchmen's throwback post about G+ and writing for the baron series here.

Speaking of reviews and throwbacks, here is the Swords & Stichery reviews of the baron series:
http://swordsandstitchery.blogspot.com/2017/03/commentary-on-free-osr-adveture.html

http://swordsandstitchery.blogspot.com/2018/08/osr-commentary-review-on-free-adventure.html

MUSIC
Review of D.B. & The Deadbeats album "Don't tell nobody": 
http://ohjusteatit.ca/album-review-d-b-the-deadbeats-dont-tell-nobody/?fbclid=IwAR3YH8uEdFtgeBV8mebNLYqE-GAyywoCTSt0MNBiMd9AbznuhmMQQjA6NjA
I have a few thoughts on this, but I'm holding my tongue.  Simply put, this is one of if not the last recording I'll ever do, no sense getting upset about a review right?

You can check out the album here: https://dbthedeadbeats.bandcamp.com/releases

MAPPING 
I've been working on a few forest maps and colouring them in.  I currently have 2 and have to draw 2 more.  I've been playing around a little bit with shading etc, lots of fun.  Here's map 1, and then a screen shot of me putting map 1 and 2 together.  I have no idea if this will see the light of day at all.

Music and lighting a fire.

A few months back I talked with some friends of mine who are in the "Ash-Hats" and "Silent Dissonance" about possibly writing some music for me.  They are always looking for things to do.  At the time I was really working on a adventure sandbox, and my sorta idea was to create a video trailer for the adventure, and then when it was complete do a full length video detailing the whole book.  A lil bit of marketing and obviously fun for everyone! Two fold really, makes me do some video editing which I don't do often and gets the guys writing some music.

Fast forward to yesterday evening:  I haven't had a lot of time to do writing on this project, because I've been up to my eyeballs working on the blue baron (Which btw is getting very close, I have level 1 layed out, and I'm starting on level 2 today).  I however had this sandbox idea rolling around in the back of my head.

I get a call last night from the guys, conference call, three of them on the phone.

"K Shane, explain the adventure, and how much music do you need?"

Me: "Well I thought about doing a 1 minute trailer thing and then a full 3 minute video".

Guys: "Alright so we kinda thought what we be cool if it was like baroque acoustic metal, and then it sorta hits this bit, where it's like you are sliding down these crazy slide into darkness and then WHAM! it hits".

Me" Fuck yah".

I then go on to explain the entire premise around the adventure, and that I don't have everything quite concrete but that its fairly dark, etc.  There's lots of umms and ahhhs, and just "well this is sort of the idea, but it might change here", basically the coles note.

What I get when I finish...

"COOL WHEN ARE WE PLAYING????"

And I laughed so hard, and then said "well I'll need some playtesters, but its gonna be old school, you will die".

note:  one guy has played old school, the others have played 3.5 and 5. 

So now I have a fire.  After rotbb is complete it's full speed ahead on this project.

So I better get my shit together, cuz there's music coming for it! hahaha

photo credit: https://www.oldbookillustrations.com/titles/miltons-paradise-lost/

Ah summer

Up here in the great white north, we get basically 3 months of summer.  Spring is kinda melty for a bit then bam summer, so I guess maybe 3.5 months.  I'm sure other gaming groups go thru this in the summer, it's just to damn busy with everything else.  Which I'm entirely fine with.

the city I live in Winnipeg, is notorious for being facking cold 9 months of the year, mosquitoes and great music.  I think part of the reason that great music is made in this town, is because there's not a hellua a lot to do on cold nights in January.  That and hauling gear in -40 C sucks goblin wang.

So people hole themselves up and write and play music.

I think this is the same for gaming, atleast for the groups I'm in.  Our 5e group has attempted to get together pretty much every month this summer, and its just not happening.  It's not because we have better things to do outside (because we play DND on my deck sometimes), its because shit comes up, things that we can only do in the summer.  Ever try camping in the winter? yah not fun.

The nice thing about this little break is, it's giving me sometime to plan campaigns.  For the old school group, I think I'm going to try out my Toadstool hack, and basically run a campaign in Mystara.  Starting with Isle of Dread and we can see where that leads.  I've been working on some of the encounters in Isle of Dread and fleshing them out.  Obviously I won't write too much about it here, as some of my players read the blog on occasion.  At this point I think I'm going to scrap mutant future, everyone was sorta meh on it.  I think it might be partially my fault as I'm not the best sci fi writer in the world.

For our fifth edition group, I think I might run some old dragonlance 2e modules.  I've talked about this before, I have Dragon Knight and I've downloaded the other 2 in the series.  It might be a nice change.

Anyways have a good weekend! I'm not gaming this weekend, I'm going to drink beer in the shade of a large tree and think about dungeons.