The Vornheim Hardcover is Too Pretty...

..as in, similar to certain records with especial packaging, I'm afraid to handle it with my biological meat-hands, feeling as if I should don nirtile gloves before leafing through the pages (It's a good thing I already have my print shop digest sized "beater copy" from the PDF). It looks especially stark w/o the cover-sheet, like a Man Is The Bastard Record. I dig how the map looks like my imagination pictures a medieval manuscript map.

I mean this in the best possible way, but it does not at all even vaguely look like a RPG book. It also smells "really book-ish", like a new encyclopedia or something; no other OSR product I own is even close as book smelling as it. I guess it's an effect of being printing by Finland's oldest bookbindery; authentic old-tyme book smell?

I dig the small, thin hardcover format, and it makes me thing of the unique intersection of durability and creativity that occurs with many childrens books. I'm even more looking forward to the new edition of Exquisite Corpses after handling Vornheim.

High Praise For Swords & Wizardry Monster Book

I just wanted to do a quickie review for the Swords & Wizardry Monster Book, available from Black Blade Publishing as a $5 PDF.

This is the monster manual that should have been released for 4th Edition. It has the iconic monsters, the classics, in a broad selection.

It is the best toolkit monster book for oldschool D&D I've seen. It has the classic fantasy monsters, the fairies, the folktale monsters, the legendary monsters, as well as plenty of animals in normal, prehistoric, giant and magical varieties, it has sword and sorcery monsters, it has oriental monsters, it has weird fantasy monsters, it has high fantasy monsters, it has robots and aliens and lovecraftian abominations. It has the best selection of monsters, bar none, that I have ever seen in a monster book.

Really, if you play any oldschool version of D&D, or a similar system, this book pretty much has it all. It doesn't have alignments, treasure types, size, or intelligence scores, so if you're a complete lump, using this book may break your brain; otherwise this book is pretty much it aside from a book or two that you're fond of...it is pretty thin on the Fiend Folio content.

If I have any quibbles, I would like a wider selection of dinosaurs, the iconic lovecraftian beasties, and that's pretty much it aside for robots, androids, cyborgs and random monster tables. It says core rules on the cover and in this case they mean it! You get a very generous core selection of monsters in a broad variety of fantasy flavors. There is a serious "we're not fucking around and doing this half-assed" attitude to this volume that I appreciate.

I used BookletCreator to format the PDF and now have a digest sized booklet of the text that is not only very readable and portable, but replaces 90% of the monster books I need to carry to a game.

Freakin' Savage Swords of Athanor on Lulu and Digest-sized Boxes

Print Version
PDF Version

When I first started getting into the Old School Revolution/Weird Planet Fantasy/Blog scene, Athanor was one of the first sites I started obsessing about. It's author, Douglas Easterly, has been posting a cornucopia of valuable "weird planet fantasy" content on his blog that I'm always eager to read, and in many cases nick for my own campaign.

Needless to say I am inordinately gratified to see that the Athanor material has been compiled, revised, and made available on Lulu. I'm unsure what the differences are between the content in this publication and the previously unveiled Athanor material, but I am eager to find out!

So congratulations to Doug Easterly, and may we see many more releases for this quality game setting!

As an aside, Doug has also been gracious enough to grant me permission to use some of his material for the upcoming Planet Algol release. Thank you very much Mr. Easterly, have a great holiday and a wonderful new year!

also...

Two Piece Boxes, 9&3/8" x 6" x 1', perfect for digest-sized booklets (or candy)

http://www.kitchenkrafts.com/product.asp?c2p=hp&pn=BX1400&bhcd2=1261536087

http://www.prettypartyplace.com/sb-211.html

I know of you out there in OSR-land have been assembling sets of digest-sized booklets, thanks for Planet Algol Campaign participant Lester you can now get yourself a cute little box to hold you booklets and dice! I don't know how I'm going to fit all of the AD&D/OSRIC rules in 8.5"x5.5" booklets...

A Note About the Iridium Plateau Hexagon Matrix

So I have finally posted the complete Iridium Plateau Region Hexagon Matrix, and I wanted to make a couple of notes regarding the subject.

Firstly, this is only the first draft of the Hexagon Matrix. I plan to release an expanded version in the future featuring:

Better detailed monster statistics

Expanded NPC descriptions

Maps of certain locations

A handful of "One Page Dungeons"

More locations and monsters, including some Empire of the Petal Throne monsters; more Fiend Folio encounters; monsters from other contemporary old-school sources and settings; and so forth.

One thing I want to do with the next version of the Hexmap Matrix is to include content from other members of the community, hopefully including those who have inspired me to create Planet Algol.

So if you have a location, a monster, a NPC, a dungeon, an magical or technological item, what-have-you, that you think would be a good inclusion, or if you have an idea regarding an existing hex, I would love to hear about it and welcome your input, either here or at planetalgolATgmailDOTcom.

In the same spirit, please feel free to use any Planet Algol material for your own setting, campiagn, dungeon, project, whatever.

As well I would like to thank all of those who have inspired and encouraged this project, especially Gabor Lux, Geoffrey McKinney, James Mishler and Scott of the sorely missed "World of Thool."