Fresh from 1980: Grenadier's Fighting Men boxed set

The "buy of the day" from last weekend's gaming auction has to be this boxed set of AD&D Fighting Men from Grenadier Models Inc. The set is in mint condition, considering its age.
The box is pristine and the miniatures themselves look like they were cast yesterday. I even had to clean off flash and mold lines, that's how new they were. Take a look:


I love the variety of weapons and poses: halberds, swords, axes, spears, crossbows and more. I don't think any of the dudes herein are fitted out exactly the same way. And is it just me, or do you sense a little trepidation—maybe even fear—in the lead-molded faces of these bold little fighters? They're aggressive, sure, but I'll bet they know when to turn tail and run.

Believe it or not, I snagged this box for $3. I'll be painting a lot of miniatures this winter, so perhaps I'll check back on these fellows so we can see how they've progressed.

Fistfuls of loot at the fall gaming auction

Last weekend was the fall auction at Games Plus, Chicago's gaming mecca. Enthusiasts from near and far emptied out their closets and bookshelves, filling the halls of Games Plus with much-loved gaming books, miniatures, board games and accessories.

Each day had a particular theme. I stopped by for Saturday (the tabletop RPG book day) and Sunday (the miniatures day). Once the bidding commenced around 11 a.m., it didn't stop until about 8 or 9 p.m. The Games Plus team went non-stop, auctioning items fast and furious—and frequently switching out auctioneers when a particular volunteer's voice started to fade.

Most lots went for less than $10, and plenty of great deals could be had for as little as $1 or $2. The auction featured several jewels from the hobby's early days. In particular, I saw near-mint copies of Phil Edgren's "The Book of Monsters" and "The Book of Demons"—both circa-1976 unofficial supplements to D&D and other first-generation fantasy RPGs. I admit that I didn't really know what they were when I saw them sitting atop a pile of books. But a quick flip through the musty pages confirmed their old-school cred. They were published through Little Soldier Games. I couldn't find much reference to Edgren or the publisher on the Web, but there's this.

Interestingly, throughout the day, the D&D 3.x core books received much higher bids than the 4e stuff in the auction. One 4e PHB with a starting bid of $10 didn't even sell! But none of the current generation of fantasy games proved as popular as the Pathfinder core book. I saw just one copy go up for auction, and bidding ended somewhere around the actual retail price for the book.

And I spotted this just before I left, so I couldn't bid on it. But I would have!


So what did I get, you ask? I scored a copy of Fantasy Flight's "Lord of the Rings: The Confrontation" 2-player board game, and a I won a lot of 6 AD&D books, all by Gygax—two of which were immediately earmarked for The Reverend, an occasional commenter on this blog and a real-life fellow gamer here in Chicago.

On Sunday, the miniatures day, I spent about $35 and walked away with a nice pile of assorted miniatures, rulebooks, terrain and some static grass. I had entered some of my own stuff in the auction too; later this week I'll find out how much cold, hard store credit I'll be getting from that.

Rules-lite Savage Worlds: It works for us

This month marks the one-year anniversary of my Savage Worlds fantasy sandbox, Autumn Frontiers. We're about 14 sessions in, which averages out to about one session per month—not too bad, but a little less frequently than I would have liked. Oh well, we're all adults with busy lives, so I'm not gonna turn up my nose at 14 substantive sessions in a year. And did I mention that this is the longest-running game I've ever GMed?

Anyway, we're using Savage Worlds, and over the last year we've tinkered mightily with that system. Most of our modifications have been designed to speed up an already fast ruleset. That's one of my weaknesses as a GM—no system will ever be fast enough for me, because I live in mortal fear of boring my players with drawn-out, grinding combats. So anything that speeds things along is paramount at my table.

The first thing we did was eject the playing-card initiative system in favor of a single d6 roll per side (one for the players' party, one for the GM's monsters). This also necessitated tweaking all of the various edges that reference initiative or being dealth the Joker, etc. Spending a benny can still win the players initiative if they so choose, however. I know the playing-card initiative system is a hallmark of Savage Worlds, but to us it just introduced 52 extra fiddly bits to our already crowded tabletop. Out it went.

We've also ignored a lot of the combat maneuvers (disarm, called shot, etc) as well as most of the edges that don't show up on character sheets. When I stat out monsters, I prefer to express their threat in terms of hard numbers rather than edges (which, like feats, are difficult for me to remember during combat).

We kept the skill list, but we only use about 6 skills regularly, the rest being relegated to specific situations or characters.

Really, what's kept us most excited about Savage Worlds has been the innovative resolution mechanic: Target Number 4, which you can attempt on a variety of polyhedral dice based on your relevant skill. But you're always trying for a 4, mostly. And any dice that rolls its maximum explodes, allowing you to roll it again and add it to the previous number. This can result in some hideously high damage rolls, both for the players and the monsters they encounter, and that's kept things very interesting out in the wilderness. Anything that rolls dice to attack you can, conceivably, drop you with one attack. We love it!

In retrospect, the path we've charted with this game has a lot in common with UncleBear's "Old School Anything" concept—just strip out all the extemporaneous stuff from your game, look at what's left, and run a game with it.

GenCon photo highlights..finally

Yes, I know GenCon was more than a month ago. But I'm just now posting a few choice photos from the games I enjoyed last month. Gimme a break!

First up is a pic of Frank Mentzer DMing a session of Tower of Gygax. It really was a treat to watch him rock the party's world. I think the pic is big enough for you to zoom in and see the whiteboard o' death behind him. I didn't actually get to play with Frank, but I watched for the better part of an hour and then jumped in when a new DM took over.


Here's a shot of the GM Jam featuring (from left) Josh from Stupid Ranger, Zach from RPGBlog2, Jeff from Bonescroll, Mike/Chgowiz from the Old Guy RPG Blog and Tony Law of RPGCentric. Since I'm a player in Mike's sandbox fantasy campaign, I did my part by shouting questions designed to extol Mike's virtues and tout my own capabilities as a player.


I also played in Zach's Microlite74 game "Smash and Grab at the Kobold Caverns." The title was very accurate—the session was only two hours, compared to the normal four hours for a GenCon RPG event, and the players were literally competing to score the most loot and win the very real prize that Zach had hidden in his backpack. Toward the end of the session, as the characters began fleeing back to town with their treasure, my character drank a potion of strength, heaved open a huge door and grabbed a single gem that proved to be more valuable than anything else retrieved by the players. Thus I won the prize—a custom set of Call of Cthulhu dice! Thanks Zach—nice ears, buddy!


My first night at GenCon I arrived too late to pick up my badge. So I wandered over to a nearby hotel and watched as Luke Crane GMed a session of Burning Empires. I've played Burning Wheel and read Burning Empires, so it was a real treat to watch a game run by someone who knew the system and setting so intimately.


And that's it! Look for more horribly outdated posts here in the future.

Need an extra player at GenCon?

My GenCon plans have changed a little bit: my friend with whom I was going to be traveling had to bail, so I will be heading to GenCon on my own. So, I'm interested in dropping in on some games! Either official con events or hotel lobby affairs, doesn't matter to me. Send me a direct message through Twitter or post here and we can talk.

Follow-up to Gygax memorial story

Last week I had the opportunity to write a follow-up story for the Chicago Tribune about the Gygax memorial planned for Lake Geneva. It was a deadline-intensive piece, and I wasn't able to interview Gail Gygax in time to turn the story in to the editors. I was pleased with the placement, though—page 3 of the Sunday edition.

There are no big revelations in the story, but it does describe Lake Geneva's general attitude toward projects on its lakefront. Plus I got to interview Jim Ward (though just a single quote made it through the final, edited article. Them's the breaks when writing for a specific page shape.)

Memorial of 'Dungeons and Dragons' creator proposed for Lake Geneva lakefront

It's a tiny piece, but it looks good on the page.

Here's the best quote from Ward that I never got to use:

I was picking books out [at the local bookstore], and I went through the rows and picked out my seven books. There was this gentlemen standing beside me who had picked out the exact same seven books. He looked at my stack, which included a Conan book by [Robert] Howard. He said, 'I've got this new game that actually lets you play as Conan!'"

That's Jim Ward, describing his first time meeting Gary Gygax in 1974. The rest, as they say, is history.

Library D&D: Can it work?

I have a strong desire to put up a simple paper flyer at my local library (4 blocks up the street here in Chicago) and run a pick-up Swords & Wizardry game for whomever shows up.

I probably wouldn't be out of line to assume that I'll get mostly younger players, folks who have probably not played a pen-and-paper rpg—but it's possible I'll draw some older players as well.

I mean, didn't D&D get promoted early on by local libraries as a way for bookish kids to make friends and stay social? Is it possible to re-capture that excitement today? Can the "neighborhood game" be re-created in an era of iPods and video games and reduced attention spans?

Last month I wrote an article about gaming in libraries; it focused mostly on video game events. But everyone I spoke to was enthusiastic about the idea of bringing in kids and showing them how to have some good, clean fun in their local library.

It would certainly make for an interesting social experiment.

The doom of us all

Not really, but there's something just a little wrong about using an iPhone app to roll your dice. And that's just what my friend Colin did in a D&D game last weekend. He insisted on it, even when I shoved handfuls of dice under his nose. In fairness, he relented and rolled polyhedrals later in the evening—after his iPhone's battery started to die.

Here's the group shot. We were actually playing D&D 4e—a first for me, and I'm grateful to Andy (the DM, far right) for putting together a great game for the group, which included one rpg newbie and one fella who hadn't played since high school.

UPDATE: Stargazer notes a couple more dice-rolling apps.

How Do You End a Game Line?

It appears that Fantasy Flight Games is no longer going to be supporting the Midnight d20 setting, and that a possible sale of the setting's rights is in the works. Several blogs have used deprecating terms to describe this move—"ditching" the game, the "shame" of FFG turning its back on Midnight—but I hold a different opinion. I believe it's entirely possible to end a successful game line, and I don't think it's fair for Midnight fans to hammer FFG over this latest move.

I had the privilege of gaming with Jeffrey Barber, who did most of the original writing on the first Midnight book (and got a spine credit on said book, which is fairly unheard of in the RPG industry). He put a ton of creativity into that initial setting, and since 2003 FFG has supported the hell out of the Midnight line with an enthusiasm rarely seen by publishers today. To date, the company has published more than a dozen supplements, adventures and sourcebooks, and the core book is in its second edition. I've playtested Midnight's adventures and played the game with Jeff and other folks who worked closely on the game.

No one ever wants their favorite game line to end—not the gamers, not the writers and editors who worked on the books, not the retailers who want to keep regular players coming back for the latest release.

Simply put, Midnight fans were not left out to dry. They got a very well-supported game and a host of official products from a stable company known for producing quality stuff. And it appears PDF-only readers won't get the shaft, nor will the hardworking folks at Midnight Chronicles, a television series that seems closer than ever to seeing the light of day.

Not everyone wants or needs a dozen supplements to have a good game. But Midnight's fans never wanted for shiny new books to buy, if the mood ever struck them. We should all be so lucky.

Bound for CODCON, It Would Appear

In the last 48 hours, a weekend of gaming fun coalesced from the aether of nothingness. It looks like I'll be hauling most of my regular Chicago gaming group out to Glen Ellyn for CODCON—the College of DuPage's annual gaming convention.

With any luck, my merry band of adventurers will descend upon Chgowiz's Dungeon Robbers, Inc. event and venture forth to plumb the depths of his old-school dungeon. If his game is full, well, we'll no doubt find ample entertainment at CODCON.

I'm also intrigued by one of the vendors who who will be offering up a sampling of Pendraken's 10mm-scale WWII miniatures for mega-cheap. Just the thing to go with my 1/144 micro-armor collection...

Revisiting the First Adventure I Ever Wrote

I've made no attempt to hide my utter fascination with sandbox-style gaming. Last summer's old-school renaissance, with its focus on non-linear, location-based campaigning, struck me like a bolt of lightning from a clear blue sky. Here, I thought, was the sort of gaming that I had been striving toward for most of my adult life. I've seen the light!

Well, almost.

See, I had an opportunity last weekend to dig through my old RPG notebooks. The earliest was from 1997, when I had become enamored with West End Games' Star Wars RPG. At this point, I'd owned the game for several years—indeed, it was the first RPG I ever owned—but hadn't yet had an opportunity to play it with anyone. I was 15 at the time, and I cobbled together a campaign to run for my high school friends. The game quickly degenerated into a fairly traditional "adventure path" type of campaign, with the PCs shuttling across the galaxy following clues I had painstakingly arranged for them to follow and interacting with PCs that served only to further the game's plot. It was my own original work, but I was definitely railroading them.

But that first adventure, when I was still trying to lure my friends into regular gaming, was different. I had no clue how to write an adventure. All I knew was that my friends—occasional D&D dabblers—had a tendency to run all over the place and get into trouble. Knowing that, I made a location-based introductory adventure set on a wacky space station full of cantinas, bazaars and brothels. I had a few scripted encounters, sure, but my primary motivation was making sure I could react appropriately when they tried to do crazy stuff.

And it worked! We had a great time playing, and the one and only goal of this adventure (get the players a starship!) worked out well.

Fast forward 12 years, and here I am, re-discovering those very fundamental elements of making games hum. Doubtless my 15-year-old self has a few more lessons in store for my 27-year-old self to discover.

Overheard last weekend at my FLGS

Last weekend I spent a good chunk of time sitting on a stool at Games Plus playing in Chgowiz's Dark Ages campaign. When my thief character wasn't fighting goblins and pillaging ancient libraries, I listened in on another D&D campaign taking place one table away. Here's a random sampling of the quips I overheard:

"A month passes and the rains finally stop."

"All your hair falls out, so that means your Charisma decreases by 2."

"Alright, it's just you guys and the one-armed shapeshifter left in the room. What do you do?"

Heady stuff, eh?

I asked them what they were playing and got a pretty gratifying answer: "Well, it's D&D—but we're using little bits from all the editions, and it's worked for us for a long time."

The thing was, they couldn't have been older than high-school age, all of 'em. So for them to be talking about playing for a long time, even a few years, well that suggests that these enthusiastic chaps have been playing D&D—specifically a mishmash homebrew arrangement—from a pretty young age.

And that's pretty awesome, if you ask me.

Piecing Together a Megadungeon

Like many RPG bloggers, I've lately been bitten by the megadungeon bug. As I mentioned earlier, my sandbox fantasy campaign is moving into adolescence, having hit a few important milestones recently. The story is now largely in the players' hands. With that in mind, I'm starting to think about a tentpole dungeon thematically tie together a lot of the threats they've faced so far in the wilderness.

The thing is, I've never designed a megadungeon, and right now I'm content to spend my free time actually playing our game, not necessarily creating stuff to put in it. My creative period was last summer, and it was grand. Now, I'm more excited about playing.

With that in mind, I'm going to start piecing together a multi-level megadungeon using various free dungeon levels available on the net. I'll fit these floors together as logically as possible, retaining the monsters and traps that "fit" with my overall idea (and there is one!), trimming off passageways and chambers where necessary and generally jettisoning the stuff that just ain't right.

The goal isn't to create a funhouse dungeon or a mishmash of rooms bereft of any logic, and I freely admit that I may have to take drastic liberties with the material. With any luck, though, I'll be able to string together at least a few floors to create a mysterious, scary dungeon to anchor a fairly large portion of my wilderness map.

I've got a lot of fodder to work with: Amityville Mike has been reliably cataloging his work on Stonehell; Jeff Rients offered up a wealth of information via Under Xylarthen's Tower; James M. started things off with The Ruined Monastery in Fight On #1.

Looking elsewhere, I hope to snag a level or two from Sham's Dim Expanses. Likewise, The Darkness Beneath (itself a collaborative dungeon) has been getting a lot of attention in the pages of Fight On! And Chgowiz's handywork will surely make an appearance via his nifty one-page dungeon adventures.

See what I did just then? I name-checked a bunch of prolific bloggers while casually informing them of my desire to take their creative works, pull them apart and reassemble the pieces in odd ways. I think that's the ethos of the old-school renaissance, and I flatter myself with the thought that they--and the other half-dozen gamers out there who will no doubt provide fodder for my megadungeon--would be pleased.

Return of the Diehard

Thought I'd left you there, huh? No, all is well in the land of the Diehards. Well, but busy.

Those few of you who know me in real life know that my day job just got "real" in the last couple of months. In brief: I'm a journalist, and I accepted a position at a large daily newspaper in December. Since then I've jumped headfirst into my new gig, which involves fast-paced, deadline-driven writing and reporting.

It hasn't left much time for gaming. I'm still chipping away at Autumn Frontiers, my sandbox wilderness campaign, but the group is fragmenting around me due to school, work and family obligations. One player might even move to Puerto Rico! Not many GMs can say they've ever driven a player off the continent before. Fingers crossed that I won't have that honor.

I also started playing in Chgowiz's The Dark Ages campaign, which has so far been a smashing good time. This is a real, live, face-to-face game played at our LGS in suburban Chicago. If you want to follow the campaign, surf on over to his blog or keep tabs on the campaign wiki.

And I'm also doing some freelance work for a large game publishing company. Can't talk about it yet -- NDAs have been signed and all that jazz -- but it's right up my alley and very rewarding, and it's a great complement to my day job as a journalist.

I'm hoping to resume blogging on RPG Diehard in the coming days -- perhaps not as fervently as I did during the summer of 2008, but frequently enough to stay connected to so many of the talented writers I've encountered over the last year. Cheers!

Hard at Work Heading Into the Holidays

Sorry for the lack of posting from me lately. I’m currently in the midst of a freelance editorial project for a major game publisher’s core RPG line, and I need to wrap it up before the holidays. Can’t talk about it in detail yet, of course, but it’s been a real treat for me to work on this month.

I don’t think I’m quite to the point yet where I can run “greatest hits” entries, but I might recycle a few posts from RPG Diehard’s early days (pre-RPG Bloggers network) over the next week or two.

Get Your Old-School Gaming Dice

On the prowl for some old school gaming dice? James from Grognardia was, and he got his fix earlier this year. If you’re willing to pay for a random handful, you could probably get your hands on some old school dice from Games Plus, my friendly local gaming store here in suburban Chicago, for 40 cents a pop.

Last week I happened upon a small cache of circa-1985 dice at the store. The clerk told me that the polyhedrals had been in the company’s warehouse for a decade or more, but they were dropped onto the sales floor a month or two ago, almost on a lark. I snapped the picture above with my camera phone.

I ended up grabbing a small handful of assorted dice, and when I got home I noticed that my d20 was numbered 1-10 twice. Old school indeed!

Games Plus has a mail order service that could almost certainly get some of these old school polyhedrals into your hands, if you’ve a mind to pay for ‘em.

Blue Planet, Midnight For Cheap at FFG Holiday Sale

Thanks to the good folks at the Blue Planet RPG mailing list, I found out that Fantasy Flight Games is having their annual holiday sale. I missed this blowout last year, but my buddy snagged all the books for the Midnight line for $5-10 each. Quite the discount, especially for a very well-supported 3.5 setting like Midnight.

The real treat, though, is the Blue Planet portfolio. As near as I can tell (FFG’s site is blocked at work, bleh) each BP book is $5. That means you can get the whole line for under $50. As longtime RPG Diehard readers will know, Blue Planet is one of my all-time favorite game lines; it’s also the richest, most detailed sci-fi setting I’ve ever encountered. When I lived in Missouri, I had the chance to meet (and game with) Jeff Barber, Blue Planet’s creator, who later went on to write the original Midnight core rulebook.

So do your part, drop a Hamilton or two, and get some great books!

The Great Purge of 2008

I'm in the midst of some housecleaning, at least as it pertains to my hobbies. Since the end of the summer, I've been selling off a lot of my comics and gaming stuff in order to free up some closet/shelf space for a more "distilled" version of my hobbies. Trying to separate the wheat from the chaff, if you will...simply put, I'm tired of moving boxes of stuff around to find what I want.

In practice, this has amounted to a rash of eBay auctions lately...four to five comic book lots each week for nearly a month, so far. I've also taken a few loads of books to Half Price Books; last night's haul funded my purchase of the AD&D Dungeon Master's Guide, which I've wanted to read for quite some time.

The problem, of course, is my own internal eBay policy. I allow myself to shop for new gaming stuff using only the funds I've acquired by selling off my own stuff, which helps keep my finances in order and lets me stay motivated to churn through unused bits of my collection. Last summer I sold off my Warhammer 40k armies; this summer it's comics. I'm having a tough time finding RPG books that I can let go. Plus my swelling Paypal account has me shopping more frequently on eBay...for the very stuff that I might end up selling off in another year or two. In fact, a careful read of my online commerce habits could even show that my purge is backfiring; my overall geek merchandise volume might be growing. I'll let you know next time I try to pack it all up in boxes.

Post-auction writeup: Loot, glorious loot

Yesterday was the fall gaming auction at Games Plus in Mt. Prospect, IL. I attended with an eye toward snatching up some useful and/or nostalgic items for cheap. In that respect, I was thoroughly successful. Here's what ended up in my adventurer's backpack at the end of the day:

• Savage Worlds Explorer's Edition- $6
• Dungeon Worlds: Catacombs - $1 (didn't really need it, but the price was right)
• Wondrous Items of Power - $3 (terrible editing, but if I can rip even one good campaign idea out of this book, then it was worth the price)
• Wreckage - $8 (small, quick board game of Mad Max-style vehicular combat; I've coveted this sucker for a long time)
• Zombies!!! - $5 (waited and waited to snag this game for a decent price...success!)
• Agone core book - $5 (OK, I thought I was bidding on Agon, and I didn't realize it until I'd already won the auction for this game. Eh.)
• AD&D trading cards - $2 (couldn't say no, plus they'll be great for Everway)
• Cracken's Threat Dossier - 50 cents (again, couldn't pass it up. I'll play d6 Star Wars again...I swear it)

And I didn't even hit my carry limit.

Of game stores I've known: Valhalla's Gate in Columbia, MO

Most gamers, if they’re lucky, can relate stories of the local gaming store that helped foster their participation in the hobby. I’m no different, and Sir Larkins’ recent post bemoaning the slow decline of brick-and-mortar retail shops has inspired me to write about my first (gaming) love.

For the first four years of this decade, I lived in Columbia, MO while attending the University of Missouri. College helped rejuvenate my gaming appetite, but it wasn’t until the end of my tenure that I discovered Valhalla’s Gate, then a newcomer to the Columbia gaming scene (which is actually quite vibrant, having birthed several game publishing companies and nurtured many burgeoning designers).

The Gate, as it’s affectionately known, was then an upstart competing with the Danger Room, which occupied an enviable spot in downtown Columbia just across the street from MU’s campus. Despite all that, neither the Danger Room nor its successor entity could gain any real traction, and the downtown storefront closed around 2003 or so. From then on, Valhalla’s Gate was the only game in town, if you’ll pardon the pun.

The Gate had a lot going for it, starting with a huge retail footprint. This was key in a lot of ways. It let the owners take advantage of the store’s high ceiling heights to craft a well-lit, clean interior setup stuffed to the gills with merchandise. Every major element of the hobby got attention, some more than others. RPGs were huge, as were Games Workshop games. Clix-based games had their boomtime too, but they took up far less shelf space. Hobby supplies were next to terrain racks, and even less-popular miniatures games usually had a shelf or two.

What all of this meant was that the store offered a bewildering array of products distributed in a logical, well-organized store setup — as opposed to the pile-it-everywhere approach that smaller stores are sometimes stuck with. It didn’t hurt that the owners were fastidious about cleaning the place, which no doubt contributed to any number of impulse buys from impressed parents of young gamers.

And talk about game space: at any given time, the Gate had at least four fully prepped 8’ by 4’ wargame tables ready to go at a moment’s notice. Another three could be pressed into duty in 10 minutes. RPG and card gamers could pull up a chair to any of the dozen folding tables that populated the dedicated gaming room, which was separated from the retail salesfloor by a short hallway. Add in a (always clean) restroom and a couple vending machines, and it’s easy to see how this place was designed with the gamer in mind.

Anyway, I was lucky enough to land a job at Valhalla’s Gate as one of three part-time employees in the summer of 2003. In doing so, I had the opportunity to understand the store from the other side of counter. I saw how the owners made buying decisions, set up the monthly tournament schedules, organized the special orders and balanced their own personal/family lives in the process. The owners were/are all married couples with children and full-time jobs elsewhere, so life was hectic and they came to rely on the small staff of part-timers who crewed the place.

During my time there, we routinely hosted tournaments that drew gamers from as far away as St. Louis, Kansas City and Des Moines. We even had a father-and-son duo that made a weekly 180-mile round trip to play in the our Lord of the Rings CCG league.

I’ve not been back to the Gate in about three years, but it remains (in my mind, at least) the ideal model for game store retail operation.