At last! I got approvals for Monstrous Mayhem this morning and have ordered the proof copy to review.  I'm not sure why MM was approved faster than the S&S Core Book, but can only imagine it's because MM is much shorter.  Perhaps softcover gets approved more quickly as well?  Who knows.  In any case, one of the two is approved, which is definitely a step in the right direction, assuming that the proof looks good. I won't be putting MM up before the core book; it seems disingenuous to put the supplement up for print sale before the core rules go up.  I will, however, now begin working on the design of the Basic Set for print--no, of course it won't be free--but it should be pretty low-priced.  I'll keep the margin low as I can. Meanwhile, my friends, we need YOU to spread the word!  Tell people about Elf Lair Games, and about Spellcraft & Swordplay!  The more copies I sell, the closer I am to getting my head above water, and giving you ...

Fate Points A lot of old-school DMs will blanch at this idea, but I wanted to give my Age of Conan game a more over-the-top, heroic and pulpy feel this time around...plus I wanted a way to give a little something back to my players since the pre-written module I'm running is at places quite railroady, and I haven't been able to come up with good ways to fix that. So, I've implemented Fate Points, mostly as found in the Castles & Crusades Castle Keeper's Guide. Fate points are a character control/storytelling tool that have become very popular in the last decade or so, and let characters perform over-the-top feats of bravado, and mitigate the sheer randomness of the dice when things are just going really bad. For Age of Conan, my implementation is thus: Heroic Feat: Characters can spend 1 FP to add an extra die to their roll, keeping the normal amount (that is, if they're rolling 2d6 for an attack, they roll 3d6 and keep the best 2d6). Heroic Feat can b...

Betrayer of Asgard, Part One   Our band of (anti) heroes found themselves and a companion, the Aesir thief (and distant kinsman of Valder and Hrogar) Olaf One-Arm, fleeing through the Blue Mountains between Asgard and Vanaheim, bearing with them a great treasure, a drinking horn of ebony, accented in gold, covered with strange, runic writing.  They were being pursued by eighteen Vanir warriors, led by the indomitable and vicious Rorik Hoddersson. Using quick thinking and some sorcerous power courtesy of Merhotep, the group managed to use a rope to scale a 30-foot-high sheer cliff wall, where they took shelter on a rocky outcropping, and cut down the Vanir as they approached. Luukas made an assassination attempt against Rorik, but though the warrior fell, he was uncertain if he succeeded in killing the man, who was borne off by one of his followers. Merhotep revealed himself as a necromancer at last, animating the dead bodies of the Vanir as they fell, to set the corpses upon ...

That's right, folks--we're gearing back up to start the Age of Conan OD&D game back up again this Sunday.  I know what you're thinking, but it's entirely coincidental that it's happening around the same time as the Conan movie hit theaters. At the end of July, when classes ended, I offered to pick the game up again, and was gratified to see that there seemed a lot of enthusiasm for it.  It just so happened that Robert was able to wrap up his turn at GMing right around now. In any case, looking forward to diving back in.  I will be running another Mongoose adventure, Betrayer of Asgard , converting mostly on the fly.  The adventure seems interesting, a bit railroady in places, but we'll see how it goes. In any case, for those who were following along with the game, campaign blogs will start up again next week! I've also tagged all Conan-related posts, should anyone wish to go back and refresh themselves on our previous exploits and my previous C...

Okay, folks.  I think (I hope) I got this worked out.  I have now uploaded print files for both the Spellcraft & Swordplay core rulebook and Monstrous Mayhem.  Assuming everything works out, we will hopefully have them available within a couple weeks--they should (fingers crossed) be available for me to proof within a week, after which they'll need to ship me the proofing copy.  Once I OK it, I can immediately make the books available. As always I'll keep you all posted, but keep your fingers crossed for me!

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/112543-Risk-Legacy-Makes-Your-Board-Game-Decisions-Matter Now this is an interesting idea.  But I can't help but think that the implementation is all wrong.  It's too "one time only," and permanent.  I get that's the idea, but a better implementation, it strikes me, would be to use a software package to track these decisions. See, this is missing a prime opportunity--to truly integrate the digital world with a traditional board game.  To my knowledge it's never really been done, and this could be a great step.  The software package could put virtual versions of the stickers and cards into play, allowing you to set up the board for each subsequent session with all of the campaign elements present, but would then also allow you to "hit the reset button" if you want to start over from scratch without the need for buying a whole new set. The "stickers" they include could then be along the ...

MELEE Interesting note about this section: it's called "Melee," but one of the first things it says is that this section doesn't cover the procedures for Melee. Go figure. As you've no doubt already picked up, we've covered a lot of the combat procedures already, and the "to hit" tables are still to come. This section covers "Special considerations" one might take into account during melee. Gotta love the layout of the first ed. DMG, eh?  For all its Gygaxian charm, nobody ever accused it of being laid out in a logical or intuitive fashion. Number of Opponents Per Figure: Here's a section for those who insist that D&D was always intended to be a miniatures game, as it lays out the number of attackers that can gang up on one target in melee, and refers to them as "figures." It also uses squares and hexes to illustrate positioning in combat. Again, however, it's important to remember that in the early day...

So I've been trying to get my S&S books into print on DriveThruRPG.  The process has been frustrating, to say the least.  On Lulu, there is a very simple, user-friendly, step-by-step process to upload your files, which Lulu then converts to print ready format--they have an online template that you can use to do layout for cover files.  I had hoped that I could simply transfer my print files from Lulu to DriveThru and be done with it. Alas, no such luck.  DriveThru uses Lightning Source, which is a more traditional printer.  This means they have very specific guidelines for layout when it comes to creating interior and cover files.  While my print-ready interiors seemed to upload fine, Lightning Source has rejected my first three efforts at cover files. It's a very exacting, fiddly, and detailed process that I don't quite grok just yet. Alas, I don't have the funding to hire a freelancer to do my covers for me.  On the up side, I think I've finall...

I spent the day today working on what will likely be the first adventure module for Spellcraft & Swordplay, entitled "The God in the Dark."  Not only will this be our first adventure module, it will serve as a preview for the forthcoming Wasted Lands: The Dreaming Age RPG, which will, of course, be powered by O.R.C.S.! We didn't announce "The God in the Dark," as, like S&S itself, this one came about kind of by accident.  It served as a scenario I ran for my Age of Conan OD&D group, and I had the notes laying about.  It's a damn good module, if I do say so myself, so I thought that I'd flesh it out and release it as a teaser of things to come.  The manuscript is coming along nicely, and I've spoken to a few artists who may be in my budget to provide some illustration for it.  In any case, for those in doubt, Elf Lair Games is indeed back in business. We have a lot of ground to regain--a few blog postings of late have shown me that a l...

Elf Lair Games now has a website, which can be found at http://www.elflair.com/ And don't forget to stop by our store at DriveThruRPG.com!

So Julie and I saw Conan tonight.  I'll give it to you in brief, if you don't want to read a detailed review: This was not a home run.  It was not the Robert E. Howard Conan that we were promised, with one caveat: Jason Mamoa was fantastic.  I give them an A for effort and it's not being too gracious to say it was a solid base hit. So now a more detailed review.  Fair warning: there will be minor spoilers in this review.  Nothing major, but if you're avoiding spoilage altogether, you might give this a pass. First things first.  This is absolutely not a remake of the Arnold one.  The only thing it has in common is the "revenge for my dad's death" plot.  The events of the story are completely, 100% new (well, new as in, they weren't anywhere to be found in the Arnold flicks).  So that's something. Now, let's get the bad out of the way first: the problems from the standpoint of an actual Robert E. Howard Conan fan. The Present...

That's right, folks, we are back, and proud to be joining the DriveThruRPG family.  Spellcraft & Swordplay, Monstrous Mayhem, and the S&S Basic Game are now all available at DTRPG in PDF format.  Soon we hope to offer print versions from there as well.  You can find S&S at the following link: http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/product_info.php?products_id=94105?affiliate_id=1762&src=CommunityForum1 The Lulu store will remain active, but changes are coming--soon Lulu will house only the "old school" versions of S&S, and moving forward DTRPG and RPGNow will carry all of our new product . This new product includes some exciting releases that have been long-promised and hopefully will soon be moving ahead full steam.  Products like The Vampire Queen's Revenge and The Hand of Nergal, our first S&S modules, as well as Eldritch Witchery, the second sourcebook for S&S, written by Timothy Brannan.  In addition, work has re-commenced on the lo...

Folks, Broken Gods is now available from DriveThruFantasy.com, the same company that produces DriveThruRPG.com.  This version is a watermarked PDF. http://fantasy.drivethrustuff.com/product_info.php?products_id=93886

Day Two: fun continues.  I actually discovered something I've been waiting for--the expansion for the Deadlands boardgame is out!  Bought that instantly.  I also picked up a little something for Julie--I don't want to say what it is because she reads this blog, but I will probably be writing reviews of everything I got this weekend for Play Unplugged. Taej and I had lunch at Johnny Rocket's--an annual tradition.  Chocolate Coke, bacon cheeseburger, and chili cheese fries!  My doctor would have a conniption. Which reminds me: I had to stop swimming. The pool here (like the pool last year) is salt water for some reason, and it was really severely messing up my eyes.  Like, they got sore and so bloodshot it almost looked like a burst blood vessel.  So that had to go.  However, Rico made good on his promise to teach me a few moves for weight lifting and get me started on a workout plan, so that's good.  We worked out for about an hour: 40 min...

Day one was a whirlwind, but a lot of fun!  Our hotel is the closest we've been to the convention center, but still not quite as central as I'd like.  We have a skywalk, but it's actually faster to walk outside.  There is a Friday's in the hotel, which is nice--we can come right downstairs to get reasonably priced, good food.  We ate there twice yesterday because we were just too tired to walk all the way into town (that, and two of my roommates had imbibed a bit too much.). But both times we had cool wait staff, so that was nice. Got into the Dealer's room an hour early due to my librarian/educator badge; that was cool, getting to walk around a bit without it being packed with people. The stampede into the room when the gates opened wasn't as impressive as I'd hoped--I always had this bizarre vision in my head of all the vendors yelling "HERE THEY COME!  TAKE COVER!" and diving behind their booths.  That didn't happen.  The dealer's ro...

Well, here we are in cloudy Indianapolis, for another year of fun, gaming, friends-you-only-see-once-a-year (if that), and sheer exhaustion.  That's right, folks: it's Gen Con, once more into the breach. Taejas and I actually got here on Tuesday night, as we did a Trade Day for librarians and educators yesterday.  It was pretty cool, but still formative.  This is the first year they've done it, I believe, so the seminars were few and the speakers still kind of finding their way.  Still, it was a neat experience.  Got some good information, and some good advice on the job hunting situation, and met a few cool folks.  Plus, we get into the dealer's room an hour early this morning.  Unfortunately, I found out that for that first hour we're only allowed to browse, not buy.  That's kinda crap, but still it'll be neat to see the stampede coming towards us when the doors open instead of away from us. Looking forward to hanging with the guys from Trol...