Another Excellent Review of Demonspore!

A second review of Demonspore is up at the Planet Algol Blog!

First Review of Demonspore

Guy Fullerton has posted the first half of a two-part review of Demonspore in the Dragonsfoot Review Forum!

Link to the Review

Lulu extends big sale

Lulu has extended their 30% off sale, which is nice for publishers, although I wish they'd be a bit more predictable and a bit less sales-pressure. In any case, there is a new coupon code to use, which is CYBERTUESDAY305. The discount is 30% off, which is almost certainly the largest percentage they will be chopping all year. If you tend to wait for lulu deals, now is the time to go for it.

One benefit is that these codes can only be used once, so if you left something out of the shopping cart, this is a new code to use.

Now is the time to buy that copy of Demonspore and whatever copies of Knockspell Magazine you need (or player-copies of the Swords & Wizardry rules, or whatever).

The Store
Demonspore Book
Demonspore pdf

The coupon expires after the 30th.

CYBERMONDAY305

CYBERMONDAY305 is the code for 30% off at lulu!

Now is the time to buy that copy of Demonspore and whatever copies of Knockspell Magazine you need (or player-copies of the Swords & Wizardry rules, or whatever).

The Store
Demonspore Book
Demonspore pdf

The coupon expires after the 28th -- oddly it doesn't seem to exclude pdfs like most of their deals do. I don't know if that's an oversight or not.

Corrected - I said 35% but that's for a bulk order and uses a different code.

New Module Released: DEMONSPORE

Established in the subterranean cyst left by their dead god, a zealot band of Shrooms, a race known for bizarre projects and subtle objectives, have now been working for decades on the strangest task in their strange history.

... They are growing themselves a new god.

A module for Swords & Wizardry and other retro RPGs, Demonspore is designed for characters of level 3-6. Fairly large numbers of them.

Link to the pdf purchase page!
Link to the print on demand softcover (perfect bound)
If you haven't decided which you want, the whole store is here

Two modules in one large book (84 pages), Demonspore includes Throne of the Toad King and Stone Cyst of the Shroom Priests. With a vast, bizarre lair, 15 new monsters, and a typically weird and complicated plan, the sinister Shrooms are ready for battle. Are you?

*This is still not listed at RPGnow because the upload keeps failing. I'm going to wait a while and try again on the assumption that it's just their server. There's another possible error (they bounced the cover but didn't let me re-try), and if it's that, then it appears more work would be required to make their interface accept the product. I hate RPGnow's interfaces.

New Module Coming Soon!

The double-module of Throne of the Toad King and Stone Cyst of the Shroom Priests is almost ready.

With all the art now in hand, I've been engaged in a marathon layout session for the last eleven hours (since 4AM). It's just about finished, but it's also at the point where I'm a little too zoned out to keep trusting myself with getting detail work correct, so it's unfortunately time to let it rest until tomorrow. Otherwise a mistake will get made somewhere.

I'm not sure I've ever mentioned that the second module is another insidious plot of the Shrooms, but if not, consider the announcement made. Their bizarre lair is going to knock your socks off!

Victory! Wild Hare Ultra Marathon

I'm alive after my first ultra-marathon! Having run a few marathons on regular city streets, I'd thought when they said "trail run" that this was mainly going to be like running on streets but with a nice covering of pine needles on the surface.

Holy ... was I wrong. This beast is done on a moto-cross course, and I literally don't know how someone would survive it on a bike. Plunges into ravines, rocky trails laced with tree roots, more ravines, and everything with rocks. Lesson learned in the first five minutes: you use muscles running cross-country that you don't use in a street run. It was wild.

The ultra-runners are very different from the average marathoners -- very, very cool people (not that marathoners aren't, but there's a difference).

We started running at dawn, and dark had just fallen when we crossed the finish line 11 or so hours later; we went slightly further than running from "dawn to dusk," dusk not having held out for the five minutes that would have been required for a truly poetic description. This distance would only have taken us maybe 8 hours or even less on a street run, but I'm astonished that we got though it in 11 hours through that terrain. Some people ran 50 miles through it in that time, and that's just ... name level in the class.

We ran the 50K = 31 miles, 120 yards.

ps - didn't have the energy to photograph my real medal, which has a black ribbon but is otherwise the same.