FYI: The original Old School Renaissance fanzine Fight On! has a new website.
19 December 2024
06 December 2024
Against the Court of Urdor - Part 4
27 November 2024
Open Ended Games 2024 Q&A
- The most significant is that a space-based version of VsD will be coming out at some point, called Against the Star Master. (The mention of “star blades” makes me think that it will resemble Star Wars in some ways.) It looks like the playtest “quick start” rules should be available sometime in 2025, although the full game likely will not be finalized for a while.
- A companion to cover higher-level (“mythic”) characters is going to be produced at some point (although almost certainly not in 2025).
- A couple of new adventures will be coming out for VsD (probably available in 2025).
- A new “deluxe edition” version of the core rules – with a new (hopefully sturdier) GM screen – will be coming out soon-ish.
25 October 2024
Trail of Cthulhu 2e and Broken Empires
To be clear, the products themselves might be fine or even quite good. For instance, Shadowdark certainly has some interesting mechanics, some of which I'm on the fence about (but which, I concede, very well may be vindicated in practice). But the cold hard truth of the matter is that I just don't see using this game that much (if at all) in the near future, as well as the other RPG products that have trickled in over the past few years (e.g., OSE).
09 October 2024
The Tome of Worldbuilding from Mythmere Games
I thought I’d mention that Mythmere Games is running another kickstarter. This one is for a volume entitled The Tome of Worldbuilding. The title pretty much sums up what the book is about: “The Tome of World Building is written by ENNIE-award winning author Matt Finch, author of the critically-acclaimed Tome of Adventure Design. Using the Tome of World Building, you can create fantasy worlds quickly and fill them out with a wealth of detail from the random-generation tables in this book.”
While Mythmere Games is known primarily for its Swords & Wizardry retro-clone – my favourite game of the “Old School Renaissance” and the one that motivated me to start this blog over fifteen years ago – The Tome of Worldbuilding is system-neutral. This also is the case for the other book that is part of this kickstarter, The Nomicon, which provides “new tables for name generation.”
More information about the kickstarter is available here.
The art samples look really great. I’m especially impressed by the pictures by Kennon James, which evoke the style of the late great Dave Trampier, while still being original.
Mythmere Games does great work. Check it out!
07 October 2024
Sale on issues 1-14 of Fight On!
As recently announced here, the Old School Renaissance fanzine Fight On! has returned to publication after a long sabbatical.
If you are missing PDF versions of the first run, issues 1-14, they currently are available in a bundle at Drivethru RPG for 50 percent off (34.99 USD). The sale will run until this Saturday (12 October 2024).
It’s great to have Fight On! back with us … and fighting on!
05 October 2024
The Main Problem with the Rings of Power series
- The “Wizard” storyline ended pretty much as I expected (disappointing, lazy, and predictable). The story of the Istari belongs to the Third Age. There is no narrative reason for the writers to cram them into the Second Age (especially given that they already have too many other storylines to properly unfold). (But it looks like the proto-hobbits won't be around for next season? Or is that too much to hope?)
- The Durin III conclusion made no sense. (He single-handedly managed to bury the balrog with a swing of his axe? And since the dwarves now know that a balrog lies beneath Khazad-dûm, why would they later “dig too deeply” and release it in 1980 of the Third Age?)
- The Númenor storyline feels forced and under-explained. (You would have no idea of the central role that the “fear of mortality” vs “faith” plays in the conflict between the “Kings’ Men” and “the Faithful.”)
- The Adar story was a surprise and I found it moving.
- A solid ending for Celebrimbor. (I like how he manipulated Sauron into killing him, thereby ending his torment.)
- Sauron/Annatar is a joy to watch whenever he's on the screen (the actor Charlie Vickers really captures the essence of the character).
- And … how the hell is Gil-Galad the High King of the Elves? He’s portrayed as an indecisive doofus in the series.
Sadly, The Rings of Power is not what a series that aimed to tell a story about some key events of the Second Age – as described by J.R.R. Tolkien – would look like. It is no wonder that people who actually like the writings of Tolkien find it so disappointing.
02 October 2024
Rings of Power Season 2 Thoughts
Below are some quick thoughts on RoP season 2.
- The sets in both seasons are great. Ost-in-Edhil, Númenor, and (especially) Khazad-dûm look amazing.
- Many of the actors are quite good and are well cast for the characters they represent (e.g., Elendil, Annatar, Celebrimbor, Durin IV, Elrond, Miriel, Ar-Pharazôn).
- I like the new character Adar and the nuance that he brings to the condition of orcs in Middle-earth (a topic with which Tolkien himself struggled throughout his life).
- The original character Arondir also is cool (and well-acted).
- The relationship and interactions between Celebrimbor and Annatar this season are quite compelling. Annatar’s “gaslighting” of Celebrimbor is well done overall, I think. (But I’m annoyed that the relationship unfolds over a period of months instead of decades.)
- The portrayal of Sauron (Annatar) this season has been excellent.
- I’m still really annoyed by the grossly compressed timeline. Smashing together events from the middle of the Second Age – the forging of the rings and the war of Sauron and the Elves – with events near the end of the Second Age – the fall of Númenor – irritates me to no end. 1700 years reduced to … 170 days?
- Not only does the compressed timeline make a mess of the history of Middle-earth, it creates too many storylines, none of which are adequately developed. E.g., Why is Númenor split between the Faithful and the King’s Men? Watching the show, you’d have no idea (aside from the prospect of “elves stealing jobs”!?!).
- The “Wizard and proto-hobbits” storyline is terrible and pointless. It doesn’t even have a minimal connection to anything that Tolkien wrote. It’s an attempt by the writers to ram into the series a “Gandalf and the Hobbits” origin story. There already are too many storylines in the show and it definitely does not need this one. (The actor who plays the Wizard is quite good, though.)
- The scripts, especially dialogues, are often quite bad (albeit slightly improved from last season).
- Middle-earth feels too “small” in the series. Characters pop around the vast land (from Lindon to Ost-in-Edhil to Khazad-dûm, or from Pelargir to Ost-in-Edhil) far too quickly. (A great virtue of the original Peter Jackson trilogy was that it conveyed a real sense of the enormity of Middle-earth, the far distances and wildlands of the world.)
- Related to the previous point, the pacing always feels off, too rushed.
30 September 2024
My grievances concerning 5th edition Dungeons and Dragons: a final statement
I saw The Lord of the Rings animated movie when I was 9 or 10 at a repertory theatre. Then I read The Hobbit. That got me really interested in fantasy stuff. It’s what motivated me to then ask my parents for the Dungeons and Dragons Basic Set for my birthday. (It was the one written by Dr. Holmes – hence it had those annoying chits instead of dice.)
Given these influences, I would say that Tolkien, Moorcock, and Howard had the most influence in shaping how I interpreted D&D/AD&D when I got into FRPGs in the early-mid 1980s. (I eventually would go on to play games directly based on the writings of Tolkien and Moorcock; indeed, these eventually supplanted AD&D in my high-school group.) Perhaps this is why – more than any particular set of rules – the more recent Wizards of the Coast versions of the game leave me cold. Over the past 25 years the game has felt more like “fantasy superheroes” than the kind of fiction that I had associated with it – and, I suppose, still do, when I think of “classic D&D.”
Turning to my experience running a “World of Greyhawk” campaign using the fifth edition rules – and leaving aside the game’s overall “ethos” and “aesthetics” (including its unfortunate recent turn towards “twee”) – there are three elements of the game that especially came to vex me:
a. Its “superhero” “no-wounds-are-serious” system of rest and recovery;b. Its “unmagical” magic system; andc. Its flavourless, often tedious combat system.
24 September 2024
The Kirkyard of St Cuthbert
While in Edinburgh, I naturally visited the kirkyard of St Cuthbert. A saint in our own world from the 7th century, St Cuthbert also famously travelled to the World of Greyhawk (Oerth), where he became an important deity, a champion of law and order against the chaos and evil of vile Iuz. In fact, one of the characters from my recent Greyhawk campaign, Cedric the warrior cleric, was a priest of St Cuthbert.
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About Me
- Akrasia
- I'm a Canadian political philosopher who lives primarily in Toronto but teaches in Milwaukee (sometimes in person, sometimes online).