Monday, November 20, 2017

Bibliophilia and Logophilia: SUPERGEEKED on Books and Words

Thank you Capri23Auto at Pixabay dot com!


I have just crawled out from savoring a short excursion into fun words, and thought others might enjoy it, too.

Jer Thorpe, the current Innovator-in-Residence for the Library of Congress, made a collection of words with beautiful sounds and meanings, and they all have to do with books, which are two of my restrained-with-difficulty obsessions.

I have to admit, I'm not as good or persistent a reader of the contents of books as I could be.  My grandparents gave me bookshelves worth of cloth and leather books, but it's like swimming through oatmeal reading many 1800s books. My fetish instead is for the binding, the covers, the typefaces.

A word game which can make adventure seeds, poetry, doggerel or dungeons out of phrases:
FMOD's Take on Six Word Dungeons

My previous posts gushing about words:
Close to the Longest Day of the Year
Words or Names I Like for their Sound
Raiding Pharmacies for their Names

I wrote the Statues adventure around a city-wide hunt for books (and statues... and treasure).

If I had time and more treasure in real life, I would take letterpress and bookbinding classes and see if I could create a Deluxe edition of Statues with better illustrations and design.  That might appeal to a different customer than somebody who wants a practical, no-frills pdf to run at the table.  (Read this in your skull with a clipped Received Pronunciation Bond villain voice, preferably while sitting in a wing chair, stroking a fluffy purebred cat:) "Certain...wealthy European connoisseurs would pay large sums of money...for the privilege!"  I have no illusions about making more than beer money, but it would be fun to be able to offer some people pdfs, and to offer to other people- bibliophile weirdos like me- solid hardcover books which don't have the same aesthetic as most of the stuff out there. 

OK!  Here, finally, rewarding your patience in reading through my digressions, is the article that I liked so much:

My Sammelband has Frisket-Bite: A Short Glossary of Delightful Library Terms

Monday, November 13, 2017

STATUES review is up at tenfootpole.org!

My facial expression right now is the opposite of this.
Check out the STATUES review at tenfootpole.org!
If other bloggers want free copies to review, email me at machuvmajmn at gmail.

Tuesday, November 7, 2017

STATUES pdf available now at RPGNow and DriveThruRPG

Part of the gorgeous map/book combos characters are hunting for in STATUES.  Any resemblance to Braun and Hogenbeck's view of Constantinople is entirely because I MS Paint-ed all over their beautiful map

Instead of my usual grumbling, I have finally published my own adventure, composed my way, on RPG Now and DriveThruRPG.  

Bryce Lynch of tenfootpole.org emailed me some great advice and directed me to look at the formatting tips on ChaoticHenchmen.com (not all of which I followed, but at least now I know what I should be doing for my next project).

Please check it out.  I hope you buy it and use it and have fun.

Click below


or copy-and-paste:

http://www.rpgnow.com/product/225559/Statues

Wednesday, November 1, 2017

Czech Early 20th Century Artists as DMs - Inspired by Against the Wicked City


People often rip on "Lazy Gaming Inspiration-through-Art" posts, but in general, I really enjoy them.  Sometimes I'll see a tribute to David A. Trampier, or more often, Erol Otus, (but TOO often, Larry Elmore - here is where I can join in with chorus slagging an art post).

Tumblr blogs can be fun: Archaelogical objects from ancient times which are begging to be magical treasure or Lovingly pre-masticated begging-to-be-in-a-game images  or The one with the great tagline: "Pick pictures at random, that's your dungeon and/or wilderness adventure"


Best are picture posts which showcase art which wasn't intended for role-playing games, tied, in my estimation, with posts featuring photos from the real world (such as just about any random shot of something in Iceland) which could inspire gaming settings, plots, items, characters, and monsters.  It's like your substitute teacher eliciting from the class nouns and adjectives and phrases which have to do with plumbing, and then revealing that these are all part of a Mad Lib which somehow fits alarmingly well into a love letter or personals ad (and then that particular sub NEVER being allowed to teach again in your district once parents heard about it).

So anyway, Joseph Manola, on his often-awesome Against the Wicked City blog, apologizes even in the title of his art post, but writes some really funny stuff: If Romantic-Era Artists Ran D&D Campaigns (AKA 'a thin excuse for an image dump')

Here goes a ripped-off riff from that - hope you like...

IF CZECH EARLY 20th CENTURY ARTISTS WERE DMs

Josef Váchal (1884-1969) - Disturbingly vivid improvisor.  Always takes PCs through Astral Plane, Ethereal Plane, Negative Material Plane.  Spirits, non-corporeal undead, and spirit giants storm center stage often.  After particularly terrifying gaming sessions, he won't host again for a month; tells players he has to clean their "psychic residue" out of his apartment due to their "magical experiments."

His gaming group's visit to the "Elemental Plane of Passions and Instincts":
The party lost a valuable artifact during escape from the Astral Plane, had to bargain with one of its denizens to retrieve it...
The next night, the party's magic user had to repay this debt with punishing interest...
 Searching for their missing wizard, the party found their way blocked by the gargantuan, hostile spirit of the Whispering-Wind-in-the-Trees swamps.
Jan Zrzavý (1890-1977) grumblingly broke off from the Váchal-dominated "Sursum" gaming group, swore he would run a kinder, gentler game for his new group:
Still gets mondo-gonzo freaky when Zrzavý lets science fiction chocolate drip into his fantasy peanut butter...

Josef Lada (1887-1957)- Never invited into Váchal and Zrzavý's groups.  Is OK with that because, just from reputation, they freak him out.  Recruited his own group of gamers from local villages to play at the house he shares with his parents and grandma.  Rolling rough-hewn polyhedral wooden dice around his family's antique Czech farm table, the players say his adventures start out sunny and somewhat vanilla, but then quickly turn their folklore vibe up to 11 and get excellently eerie.


When the folklore starts to flow and things get eerie...

Players are often distracted during games at Lada's house by the scent of Lada's babička baking; she interrupts the action at intervals to give players traditional bread and pastries.

His players give him props because Lada isn't afraid to describe, in front of his grandma, the beautiful and deadly rusalka emerging onto the lakeshore to have topless moonlight confabs with the green-skinned vodnik, who collects human souls to seal in his jars underwater.