Meatshields!

On my last blog post, I pulled in a piece of art from Google images, and used it for the image of a bundle. Turns out that even though it wasn't shown wherever I got it from, the picture comes from an old-school hireling generator, Greg Gillespie's "Meatshields!"

Meatshields! has been out for quite a while: this isn't the announcement of something new. But the program deserves to get pushed back into the public eye, because it's a really cool resource. It's doubly neat because I had the pleasure of actually meeting Greg at North Texas RPGCon. He is one of the people who absolutely give to the hobby with all their hearts. Greg did Barrowmaze at no profit to himself. The Meatshields generator is an awesome piece of work, filling a missing piece for the DM, free, and with artwork good enough that out of the whole internet I happened to pick out one of the illustrations.

So please go and take a look not only at Meatshields!, but if you want to see a master painter and terrain-maker, Greg happens to be one. Look at his blog, Discourse & Dragons.

Greg is one of the builders. In my family, that's one of the biggest compliments we give. Some people build.

Dak Ultimak needs to get mentioned in this regard as well. There are some people who make things, really cool things like Reverend Dak's 'zine, which is called Hack! (Exclamation points are a theme in this post, clearly). The last copy of Hack is excellent, starting with a Jason Sholtis cover and rolling right into gunfire. It's a whole bunch of pages about getting firearms into a game of old-school D&D, whether that's OD&D, Swords & Wizardry, OSRIC, LL, or Basic. It's loaded (ahem) with fun.

Again, one of the people who builds, rather than tearing down.

Let us all lift a glass to both of these excellent individuals, in thanks for their generosity of spirit and nobility of character!

New 10% Discount in the Bundle

Frog God Games has kicked more into the Bundle of Holding. A 10% discount on anything bought through the Frog God Games website -- including physical books (although the 10% discount doesn't apply to the shipping, just the books you buy).

Depending on what you buy, that could almost pay for the cost of the bundle right there.

We also added a pdf copy of Cyclopean Deeps #1. That is clearly a gateway-drug kind of thing, so, yeah. It's intended to suck you into buying the rest of the series as it comes out. I am currently working on #6 out of 12.

What Everyone Else is Saying

Every once in a while, you end up with things you have to repeat, even though everyone else has already said them. It's not easy to mention the Bundle of Holding, the number of times that Erik Tenkar alone has sent out copies of the Swords & Wizardry Complete Rules, or the Sword of Air Kickstarter.

Which brings up my dad. Some of my favorite childhood memories are of going with my dad to the University of Houston, where he was a professor (now emeritus). I remember the smell of chalk dust and pipe tobacco, I remember the modern architecture of the place and the rippled landscaping (Houston is very flat; hills are sculpted).

I also remember the echo chamber. Because to demonstrate it, they took a gun and fired a blank round. This was my only childhood contact with a real gun, and it's really cool to hear one when it's fired in an echo chamber.

My point being, that if you end up temporarily in an echo chamber, just roll with it. And therefore I present to you the main topics that everyone is talking about today:

(1) OSR Bundle of Holding. If you don't have even half of the stuff in here, and you can use pdfs without going insane, this is probably the best pdf deal that has ever been offered in the "OSR." It's an incredible value. I bought it myself for little more than Vornheim and the other LotFP module. Just those were worth it to me, and I'm cheap.

(2) The permanent give-away of the Swords & Wizardry Complete Rulebook forever to everyone has prompted a lot of interest. Erik Tenkar gave away lots and lots of them, and he wasn't the only one helping to distribute them.

(3) Sword of Air Kickstarter continues to roll. I was on the phone with Bill earlier today, both of us writing, kicking ideas back and forth.That's a fun way to write, incidentally.

Enjoy the gaming of the day, and may your dice never roll you into a hayrick!

Spam Warning

Apparently someone is using my name to create spam emails. My email address is "mythmere at yahoo dot com." If anything comes to you from a different source, it isn't me!

Old School Bundle of Holding

In a few minutes, Bundle of Holding is going to release an Old School Bundle. Their previous bundles have been quite interesting -- this one is actually right on target.

The way these things work is bizarre, but it apparently works. I think that people "pay what they want" at the beginning, but as the average price moves up, that averaged price becomes the minimum. I think that's how it works, anyway. There will no doubt be instructions.

It is an inexpensive way to pick up pdfs, and I'm the author of a couple of them.

HERE IS THE LINK, which will hopefully work after the preview page is done and the bundle actually starts

Swords & Wizardry Complete Rules now FREE

Because the Frog God Games Sword of Air Kickstarter has hit 401 backers, the Swords & Wizardry Complete Rulebook is now FREE. That doesn’t mean we’re releasing a crippled or art-free version, it means the full-artwork, Erol Otus on the cover, no-text-left-out, existing was-for-sale-yesterday version of the book is now a free pdf! Note: Until we change the price on the Frog God Website, you’ll have to have a buddy send it to you — but we hope to have that change made ASAP.

A couple of caveats; please don’t make changes to it and then send it out, because then no one will be sure if they’ve got the official copy. Also, we will probably be correcting the links in the pdf, because we just recently changed the location of the Frog God Games website. Finally, although we’re giving the pdf away for free, that doesn’t mean that the art can be stripped and used. We still hold the copyright, we just give away the copies for free. That said, ENJOY!!!

PS more news is probably coming out later today.