New Stuff from Barrel Rider Games

Archer from Barrel Rider Games

You don’t have to mix it up in melee to be deadly! With the Archer you’ll defeat your foes before they ever have a chance to raise their axe! This 20 level class for Labyrinth Lord (and other old-school fantasy role-playing games) will bring new dimension to your game!

Halflings – Tales from the Fireside from Barrel Rider Games

Halflings are often regarded as lazy, boring busybodies by the rest of the world. But inside those bodies beats a heart of fire! In Halflings: Tales from the Fireside you’ll get a look inside halfling culture and society as well as learning new options for your halfling character. While this supplement is specifically designed for use with the Labyrinth Lord role-playing game, it can easily be adapted to any old-school fantasy game with minimal effort!

Half-Elf from Barrel Rider Games

Just because you’re a half-elf doesn’t mean you have to get the short end of the stick! With Half-Elf you’ll get a 15-level class for Labyrinth Lord and other old-school fantasy role-playing games! A touch of charm, a bit of wit, and a sword are all you need when you’re a half-elf!

Archer from Barrel Rider Games

You don’t have to mix it up in melee to be deadly! With the Archer you’ll defeat your foes before they ever have a chance to raise their axe! This 20 level class for Labyrinth Lord (and other old-school fantasy role-playing games) will bring new dimension to your game!

A little Labyrinth Lord plus a bit of Middle Earth = Hangout Game

Fun stuff. G+ Hangouts work just fine for gaming. Especially if you aren’t worried about specific behavior. I joined the game just because it fit my schedule for the night but will be returning.

I even had the general set of technical difficulties. Race around, swap machines, then fire it up again. I forgot dice in the madness so used my dice roller widget, which was no issue with the DM.

Fun. Tired. Nap time. More later.

ROTWORLD NPC Generator Repaired

Big shout-out of thanks to Mark C. for pointing out the ROTWORLD NPC generator was broken. During the optimization of the city name generator a few days ago, I changed the database schema but failed to update the RWNPC page.

More code I need to re-factor so it can fail on one element without causing the entire process to fail. Code can always be improved. Especially hobby code that I don’t spend sufficient energy on.

Thanks again, Mark, I truly appreciate you taking the time to let me know.

A blend? Puree? Whip? Esoteric Creature Generation meet Classic Monsters

Complete and utter synapse firing in odd directions today. Somewhere around noon I decided to blend Raggi’s Random Esoteric Creature Generator with classic fantasy monsters (via Labyrinth Lord). Granted, the idea is in complete conflict with Raggi’s original intent of producing one-off interesting creatures.

Why? Sometimes “stock creatures” are a bit dull. Almost everyone knows what most of the creatures do. Change it up, shift the universe, and see what comes out. Good goal. Guaranteed to produce odd results.

It does.

City Name Generation Expanded

Yea old City Name Generation System got a bit of an upgrade. The release is called ExtendzShazam — now bigger and pokier.

New countries: Cuba, Greece, Japan, Morocco, Pakistan, Taiwan, Thailand, Venezuela, Vietnam, North and South Korea, and South America.

Updated names: Australia, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Croatia, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Ireland, Luxembourg, Mexico, Netherlands, Norway,, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Spain, Sweden, and Turkey.

During the process a few duplicate entries did manage to sneak into the system. Overall, the system got a couple of hundred thousand new names. A few minor duplicates can get purged downstream.

This update is courtesy of the GNS.

The Mystical 1 Hour Game

I’ve played in plenty of sessions limited to 1 hour or less. The key elements are people who can be available during the same hour in a repeatable pattern. For me, the origin was the infamous school bus. Yep, being a country boy, I was stuck on a bus to and from school on a daily basis. The route circle through the country side over many miles. Lots of time to kill so we played a lot of games on the bus.

During junior high through the early portions of high school, I was lucky enough to be trapped on a bus with 3 other gamers. We congregated around the rear seats and would game until someone had to get off. Once that happened, the game would terminate unless we were in a town to further explore. Since I, and one of the early GM’s were at the tail end of the route, evening games were usually longer than the morning sessions.

We didn’t play every day. We did play regularly and could quickly pick up wherever the game was interrupted. I even had a custom rolling / map board that fit between the seats of the bus. Complete with quarter round edges to keep dice from flying around. [They still did on occasion.] I cannot recall the name of the bus driver but he allowed me to store the board on the bus and on more than one occasion moved it from bus to bus when the regular one went in for service. In hindsight, he was probably more than happy to have us mostly silent and focused on something.

We were focused because we had little else to do on the ride. So we played. A lot. Other riders came and went in the games as well. People I never would have suspected became entranced with the games. A few even became regular players outside of the bus rides.

Transition forward to the present. That gaming group and the one that followed during college are now widespread across the country. Many individuals can barely find an hour a week let alone an hour per day. Periodically we try to physically meet for a weekend of gaming. Even that is hard to schedule at times.

Several of us could, if we were willing, to dedicate the lunch hour to play online. An hour would compact into 40 minutes or less due to the need to eat, refocus, and return to work. Plausible. Having the ability to do so is slim due to ever increasing regulation of internet sites.

Shifting it outside of work hours would be far easier. The same timezone issues would be present but then life in general intrudes. We either make time for gaming or we don’t. Most are willing to find the time but meshing the timeslot with others is difficult. I couldn’t ask any of those people to commit a 3 or 4 hour block. Most would be willing to find an hour in common.

Personally, I’d be happy with 1 hour over none with great old gaming pals.

Back to the Dungeon Zine

A couple of days ago, Eldrad of Back to the Dungeon released Volume I, Issue 1 of a zine of the same name. The free PDF is 42 pages of setting and writings from Eldrad’s The Little Barony Campaign. The layout borrows heavily from 1970-80′s documents. Welcome back, fixed sized fonts. Hello again, hand drawn maps, you’ve been missed.

I’ve only browsed thus far but love the look and feel. Reminds me of many coarse, rough documents I authored back in those days. Certainly, the document is on my to-read list.