Gaming with Brand New Players!

Last night I ran a game for 6 young folks who, with a couple of exceptions, had never played a roleplaying game before. They adventured into the Ruins of Mythrus Tower, choosing to stay on the first level, but they did manage to run into a pretty deadly encounter with a carrion crawler. With all four of the armored characters paralyzed, the two magic-users evaluated the situation using their magical training and fled.

The second carrion crawler followed them to the dungeon exit, then returned for a snack. I actually told the players which character got eaten, but then remembered that when I rolled, I forgot the additional body in the area: the carrion crawler they had killed earlier. Rolled again, and it was the carrion crawler that was eaten rather than a character. Result? All of the abandoned party members survived, although each one had the unpleasant experience of being paralyzed and wondering which of them was being eaten.

Then the abandoned party members drew their swords and headed up to the surface to find their magic users.....

They decided not to kill the robed runners, but they did confiscate all the gold.

Really fun session!

YouTube Review of Tome of Horrors

Edit: Tenkar informs me that this is a review of the S&W version, which I didn't realize.

This is probably a review of the Pathfinder book, although I'm not sure because I haven't seen it yet (no speakers on my computer). Still, it may be helpful. Apparently it's a really good review, but, as I said, I haven't seen it yet ... so if the guy calls me a dick or something, post that in the comments. :)

The link to the video is here.

Value Comparison Tome of Horrors

I happen to hate expensive pdfs, mainly because I hate pdfs in the first place. So I tend to get sticker shock about the price at a pretty low dollar figure, and without thinking much about how many pages I'm getting for the dollar.

However, the enormous page count on the Frog God Games Tome of Horrors made me curious, and I took out a calculator. First of all, I took a look at the price per page -- and yes, I don't usually calculate value based on price per page, but it makes some sense here. On the printed book, with 688 pages in the Swords & Wizardry version, the cost per page on $100 is $.145. As a comparison, take a 128 page book being sold for $25, which is a pretty good price. The comparable price per page is actually higher than it is for Tome, at $.195. In other words, while it's perhaps not a super blow-out bargain, Tome of Horrors, even with the high sticker price, is actually a better deal than one ordinarily finds. The OSR has cheaper books out there, but ToH isn't at much of a premium, especially since it has binding that is sewn in 16 page signatures, a way higher binding quality than lulu.

The pdf is actually an enormous bargain, as I discovered. Take an OSR module priced at $3.30 for 32 pages -- this is REALLY cheap, because they can run $4.95 for only 16 pages. But let's make the comparison based on the really well-priced module. The price per page on this module is $.103. By comparison, the Tome of Horrors pdf, at $29.99 for those 688 pages, has a per page cost of $.043 per page. In other words, the price per page on the pdf of the Tome of Horrors is an incredibly good value compared to going prices in the OSR. It's less than half the expected price (and that's the expected price on a really inexpensive module, too).

So it probably depends on how much one hates (or loves) pdfs, and how you would value a module as compared to a monster reference book, but overall I just got a lot happier about the pdf price on ToH. Up until now, I was getting sticker shock because the total number is higher than I expect to see for a pdf, but it's actually really, really cheap when it's compared page by page.

Full disclosure: I think virtually everyone reading my blog knows that I'm working with Frog God Games on the Swords & Wizardry materials, so this is not an objective observer's view. But it's the view of a guy who doesn't set the pricing levels. I just got more comfortable with them, being someone who still has a tendency to value things using 1980 dollars instead of 2011 dollars.

And quick warning -- if you go to the FGG page and order the pdf, MAKE SURE you're hitting the button for the Swords & Wizardry version. The Pathfinder and Swords & Wizardry buttons are on the same page right next to each other.

Heavy Metal and D&D

Back in the day there was a definite link between heavy metal and swords & sorcery (and thus with D&D). About half of us were metalheads to some degree or another, although about not everyone in school was (I'm talking about middle school). Heavy Metal magazine, album covers, etc.

I'm not sure whether the question is, "Why did Heavy Metal have such a strong S&S influence," or if the question is, "Why did D&D have such strong links to heavy metal?"

The link between gaming and metal seems to be much less strong thirty-odd years later, although the link between metal and S&S seems (although I'm not current on heavy metal any more) to be pretty much just as strong from the bits and pieces of more recent metal stuff I've seen on YouTube. Medieval imagery is still in there quite a bit.

Anyway, that's my navel-gaze of the day, with no answers offered, because the dilithium crystals apparently aren't sending any power to the sonic speculator this morning.

Knockspell #4 added to RPGNow

I had a lot of people point out to me that it's odd to be selling Knockspell 1, 2, 3, and 5 on RPGNow, and not selling #4. It's not that I had any particular reason for not having #4 on RPGNow, I just never got around to it somehow.

In any case, this probably isn't a "sit up and start clicking" announcement for anyone, but just to let people know, the pdf of #4 is now up with the others on RPGNow as well as lulu. The RPGNow link is THIS LINK HERE.

EDIT - Quick note that this is NOT #6, which will be the latest issue, this is just housekeeping with an older issue.

S&W Necromancer Tome of Horrors pdf released

The pdf of Necromancer Games' Tome of Horrors has been released for Swords & Wizardry (and also Pathfinder). The download-bandwidth of a 230MB file being downloaded by hundreds of people almost simultaneously ... promptly crashed the servers both at Paizo and Frog God.

The Frog God server is back up again as of 2AM Eastern time, the Paizo server was still being untangled when I talked to Bill Webb this morning.

For anyone who didn't buy the physical book, pdfs will be available for independent purchase soon, but both Paizo and Frog God have temporarily removed their "sale" buttons until the downloads from book-buyers have slowed down a bit. When the feeding frenzy subsides, the sale buttons will show up again at both sites (I don't think Paizo is distributing the S&W downloads, so it's only the FGG server that's relevant to us).

Anyway, for the S&W Tome downloads, the problem is now fixed, but I wanted to let people know the status, and for those who plan on getting the pdf without the book you should be able to do so soon. I do not know the exact definition of "soon" in this context, but ... soon.

EDIT: Tenkar's first impressions are HERE.

Knockspell #6 is in Layout at last

I sent the materials for Knockspell Magazine #6 to Jim Kramer yesterday, so the process has at long last moved into the final stages. There's still a placeholder for one illustration, and most likely there are still the un-caught errors that always exist before reading the laid-out version, but we're finally on the road to getting this issue done.

When we get a bit closer, I'll post the cover art and the table of contents for people to look at. Right at present, though, I am catching up a bit on the real-life tasks that got shunted aside to let me finish this issue.

You and me, lawn. Head to head, this evening. The weapons will be lawnmowers. Loser gets bagged up and left at the curb. I'm here to mow the lawn and chew bubble gum, and I'm all out of bubble gum.

Also, I didn't get selected to be on a jury. Again. When you have a law degree it is a completely worthless exercise to turn up for jury selection. There's always one side that really doesn't want a lawyer sitting in the jury room.

But I digress. Knockspell #6 is in layout, the lark's on the wing, the snail's on the thorn, and all's right with the world.