Would this be Fun?

What if we made a free pdf or a Knockspell article from the bloggers who want their material from Swords & Wizardry appreciation day included in such a thing? I have to think through it a bit more, especially if it were to mean that I get going on another issue of Knockspell, but please comment with your thoughts. Even if you're not one of the bloggers who will be participating in the Swords & Wizardry Appreciation Day, would such a thing be fun? Or would it be redundant because you already would have read the blogs?

If you're a blogger, would you be interested in putting your material into a free pdf like that?

I invoke the powers of Crowdthinking!

Swords & Wizardry Appreciation Day

Erik Tenkar of Tenkar's Tavern fame has gotten together with Christopher Helton of Dorkland to set up a Swords & Wizardry Appreciation Day on April 17th (that's in 2013, for all you time-travelers needing a reference point).

The idea is for lots of bloggers to all have something related to Swords & Wizardry on that day, whether it's a new spell, monster, a play report, etc. Erik is going to be giving away a gift certificate to a random blogger, and I'm pretty sure I can scare up something from Frog God Games as well.

In any event, it's something to look forward to! As of today, 24 bloggers are already signed up, and that's only after 24 hours since the announcement. In the meantime, of course, there is a ton of activity at the Swords & Wizardry Google+ community, so if you need a quicker fix for your OD&D, come on over.

Sinful Whisper

I am finishing up the last pieces of the Swords & Wizardry adaptations of Razor Coast adventures. The one for today is Sinful Whisper, and if I'm fast I will probably also have a chance to move on to Frank Mentzer's adventure, Deep Waters.

Happy Passover!

For the last couple of days I've been buying and cooking food, since Passover operates kind of like a Thanksgiving dinner, for those who aren't familiar with it. And a happy Passover to the legion of three or four other Jewish gamers that I know!

Now that the only remaining requirement of the holiday is just to stay away from the bread, I can get back to some blogging and other gaming stuff. I now have a microphone and web cam, so at some point I will try to get those working so I can play Hangout games or roll20.

We Have 3 Winners!

Over at the Swords & Wizardry Google+ page, Frog God Games said that they'd give out some pdfs to random people when the page reached 500 members. We hit that mark yesterday, and Blonde Frog announced the winners. My only dissatisfaction is that we didn't try to obtain a 500-sided die for the event. Rachel went the boring route, and just used a computer.

Anyway, the winners are:
Roberto Micheri: your choice of either Tome of Horrors SW PDF or Rappan Athuk SW PDF.
Matthew Kane: PDF of Monstrosities.
Eric Gillespie: PDF of Grimmsgate.


You guys need to contact Blonde Frog (through Google+) to give her your email addresses. Congratulations!

Swords & Wizardry as Non Retro-clone

Tim Brannan posted some comments about Swords & Wizardry today (here is his post), and I think they're worth mentioning. He engages in the thought experiment of seeing Swords & Wizardry as a non-clone, and comes up with some very positive conclusions.

It's often said that S&W isn't a "true clone," but rather a "neo-clone," as Dan Proctor of Goblinoid Games terms it -- I think that this is a meme that got started with the early versions of S&W (which were not as close to the source material as the current printing). Conventional wisdom seldom revises itself, and I'm fine with that; it's just the way things are. Nevertheless, Swords & Wizardry as it currently stands is -- in my opinion, which may be biased -- as close a clone to OD&D as you can get, given the protean nature of the beast.

But here, Tim turns that conventional wisdom on its head. If S&W were a non-clone, is it good? Tim's answer is, "yes." So, even though I disagree with the initial premise, I have to conclude that Tim is a genius of the first water, and probably sings well, to boot.

The Fabio of the Wood Elves

One of my kids made a character for Oblivion, and just commented on the way the character looked:

"He's the Fabio of the wood elves."

 Talk about a thought virus. Now I can see all kinds of covers for elf bodice-ripper romance novels. And the titles: "Love in the Autumn Wood" just doesn't even begin to cover the territory.


The Fabio of the wood elves. Much better than the Fabio of the dwarves, though, I must say.