Early Timeline of OSR Blogging

A cursory browsing of blogs reveals the first appearances of old-school gameblogging before 2009:

Feb 2004 - Jeff's Gameblog
Feb 2005 - Mythmere's Musings
Mar 2007 - Delta's D&D Hotspot
May 2007 - Adventures in Gaming
Jan 2008 - The Schizonomicon (became Grognardia)
Feb 2008 - Sham's Grog n' Blog
Mar 2008 - How to Start a Revolution in 21 Days or Less (blog dates back to 2006)
Mar 2008 - Strange Magic

<- DEATH OF GYGAX ->

Apr 2008 - Alex Schroeder's Wiki
May 2008 - LotFP: RPG
May 2008 - The Tao of D&D
June 2008 - Chgowiz's Old Guy RPG Blog
July 2008 - Sword +1
Aug 2008 - The Society of Torch, Pole, and Rope
Sep 2008 - Back in '81
Oct 2008 - Bat in the Attic
Oct 2008 - Uhluht'c Awakens
Dec 2008 - A Rust Monster Ate My Sword
Dec 2008 - Troll and Flame
Dec 2008 - The Other Side

Let me know if you can think of any other pre-2009 old school gameblogs.

I don't know why I am compelled to undertake these tedious blogometric exercises. I think it reflects some sort of personality disorder I have.

Hiatus, Not Fizzle... Maybe a Trickle?

At a Halloween party last weekend someone was asking about my blog. I said I hadn't really been keeping up with it lately. Why not? Says I "Well, I'm going up for tenure this Fall, you see, and I've been pretty busy trying to get nice research articles out to hammer down my case. Well I got my tenure review file in and things look good, so now I'm hoping that I'll have a little more time for gaming related stuff. I'm still pretty busy, so don't expect a flood of posts, but hopefully something more than nothing..."

Along with the blog my campaigns have pretty much been on hiatus since summer. I'm calling it a hiatus, not a fizzle...

The Penelion campaign reached a nice chapter-closing point when the party made it to the top of the cloud mine and met the renegade alchemist who was obsessed with eating cumulonimbical crystals and playing organ music for the translucent cloud beasts. The party gained access to a floating wooden cube maintained by the alchemist. Because of all the babies us players are having it's hard to see this group of players getting together again on a regular basis for quite some time. I don't want this campaign to fizzle. I like it. So maybe it's time to think about recruiting a few other players...?

The World Oranj campaign also reached a nice chapter-close before one of the key players moved to Taiwan. The party made it to the hanging ceramic city of Wiggin's Drop. Maybe I'll tell you more about it some time.

Here's hoping that in the next few months a little more cyclopeatronicism will start trickling out...

Rients, Maliszewski, and Early OSR Blogging

As is probably the case for a lot of you out there, Jeff's Gameblog and Grognardia are the first blogs I ever read that focused on old school D&D. I still love both of these blogs - they just keep going and going and going and are filled with a lot of great content. They are also supposedly two of the oldest gameblogs on the block and I don't think anyone would argue the fact that they've played an important role in shaping our collective view of the Old School Renaissance.

To better understand the origin of OSR blogging a while back I did some archive snooping to see how Jeff Rients and James Maliszewski (of Jeff's Gameblog and Grognardia, respectively) originally got into writing about old school gaming.

It turns out that Grognardia grew out of a LiveJournal blog called "The Schizonomicon: Musings of a Sleep Deprived Dad". Maliszewski started writing this blog in 2002 and it was initially filled with posts about very personal non-gaming issues. Starting around 2006 a significant amount of gaming content started popping up but it was almost all about modern RPGs and/or Maliszewski's creative projects (e.g. Thousand Suns).

It was January 10, 2008 when, as far as my skimming reveals, Maliszewski made his first post dedicated to Original D&D. It was two sentences long and titled "Things I Learned From OD&D". This post was rapidly followed by a succession of OD&D-related posts including the classic "Kill the Cleric":

"Lest anyone think my respect for gaming tradition prevents my being an iconoclast when warranted, I offer you this: D&D would be better off without the cleric.... If, as I contend, D&D is primarily a game of pulp fantasy and if you want, as I do, to see it return to its roots in a powerful way, there's really no choice. The cleric must go."

By March 2008 Maliszewski had started Grognardia to focus on OD&D-related material and The Schizonomican was shuttered by October. In sum, it appears that the seeds of Grognardia were planted in early 2008 and really only grew into a dedicated blog in mid-2008.

Now let's look at the origin of Jeff's Gameblog. Rients started blogging on February 25, 2004 on tripod.com. From day one his blog was called Jeff's Gameblog and was completely devoted to gaming. On his first day of blogging Rients is talking about 80s RPGs including D&D Expert Set, Call of Cthulhu, and Heroes Unlimited. As far as I can tell this is the first glimmer of retro-RPG consciousness in the blogosphere (please correct me if I'm wrong).

If there's anything I can discern about the evolution of Jeff's Gameblog over the last 7+ years it's that the early exclusive focus on games gradually expanded to include more general retro pop/geek-culture material, especially 1980s stuff.

So what does this all mean? Probably not much, but I do think Jeff Rients deserves a ton of credit for being one of the true founders of OSR blogging. Probably the first, in fact... by a long shot...

Sneak Peek: Erol Otus' Island Town

This summer I played in an AD&D game run by Erol Otus at the North Texas RPG Con. Erol has always been one of my favorite fantasy illustrators and the Fantasy Arts Enterprises gaming supplements he published in 1979 (Necronomican, Booty and the Beasts) are some of my favorite gaming materials ever. Period.

Well it turns out the Erol is an exceptionally great DM. As great as you would hope if you're a fan of his art style. Playing with him is like walking into one of his weirdest and most whimsical paintings. For me the experience was like being in gaming heaven, really. Erol even has a homemade screen covered with his art (that's Tavis Allison peeking over Erol's arm, by the way):

The eight-hour session we played in was a test run of Erol's new module Island Town. All players are descendents of a shipwrecked crew of humans, dwarves, and halflings living on an isolated island. You can play any of these races, or you can play a hybrid called a "Moojongi" and choose which body parts you want ascribe to which pedigree! We all started at Level 0 and began the game by harvesting Hazu bulbs in the lower levels of the islands. You see, young residents of the island have to prove their worthiness to ascend to the breeding chambers in the upper island by spending several seasons making fermented Hazu cakes. This manifests as a series of competitive semi-strategic dice rolling games between teams of players. The whole process was so beautifully and poetically described by Erol in terms of the ancient traditions of blade wielding, injecting, and cake rolling - it's hard to describe the creative genius of the whole thing.

Erol explains some nitty gritty: "Here on Island Town a "0" level gets but 2D6 per stat.  You will add 1D6 per stat for each significant encounter/achievement/discovery becoming 1st level after each stat reaches 3D6.  Normally citizens achieve a 1D6 addition to a stat. after the yearly Hazu Harvest thus becoming 1st level 6 years into the 10 year stint of harvesting duties. "

This is a great mechanic. As a reward for achieving various tasks (harvesting, etc.) the 0 level characters get to roll an extra 1d6 for the stat of their choice. Once each stat gets up to 3d6 you become Level 1.

A lot happened in the session. After the Hazu harvest we opted to go fishing, at which time we encountered a Vacucmber right out of Booty and the Beasts! We also interacted with some of the elders of Island Town, had a mysterious nighttime encounter with a Rubber Face - one of the original island inhabitants, and went on a quest for sea shells in the worm infested caverns beneath the island. This was one of the most creative roleplaying sessions I've ever played in.

Erol, being the super cool guy he is, handed out drafts of the Island Town module to each of the players after the game. He is planning on making a formal release of the module at NTRPGN Con in 2012. Be sure to get a copy when it's released! Here are a few teaser snapshots of my playtest copy:

A Perfect "Retroclone"?

Jimm Johnson, propietor of the Contemptible Cube of Quazar, passed along a copy of his home campaign D&D rulebook to me:

This thing is beautiful. It's exactly what I wish I had the time to do for my own game. It is a lovely single-booklet distillation of classic D&D. It has everything players need to know, all tailored specifically for Jimm's Planet Eris campaign setting. I wish I had the same thing to hand out to players in my own games. It's a perfect way to summarize core rules, house rules, and lay out new campaign-specific classes, spells, items, etc. It's also great if, like me, most of your players aren't gamers who own their own rulebooks.

Best of all, the cover doesn't beat around the bush. It's DUNGEONS & DRAGONS dude!

I love the idea of personalized "retroclones" at every table. We all make our own houserules no matter what edition or clone we play, so why use a retroclone that is simply a collection of some other DM's houserules? DIY like Jimm. Each gaming group could have its own perfect "retroclone".

The art in Jimm's book is fantastic. It is reminiscent of OD&D and just oozes fear, whimsey, and pure dungeon mojo. Yes, I love the OD&D art style - it looks exactly like something you'd see scrawled in an explorer's notebook. It's as far away from Final Fantasy and Easley as you can get while still being representational.

You can download a PDF of Jimm's rules HERE.

TrES-2b: Dark Planet

Hi! I've been out of town on vacation for a few weeks which explains the crickets chirping on my blog. I've got a couple substantive posts brewing, but in the meantime enjoy this new release from NASA concerning the creepiest planet yet discovered:

"Planet TrES-2b reflects back less than one percent of the light it receives, making it darker than any known planet or moon, darker even than coal. Jupiter-sized TrES-2b orbits extremely close to a sun-like star 750 light years away, and was discovered producing slight eclipses in 2006 using the modest 10-cm telescopes of the Trans-Atlantic Exoplanet Survey (TrES). The alien world's strange darkness, however, was only uncovered recently by observations indicating its slight reflective glow by the Earth-orbiting Kepler satellite. An artist's drawing of planet is below, complete with unsubstantiated speculation on possible moons. Reasons for TrES-2b's darkness remain unknown and are an active topic of research."

SoCal Minicon 4 - Photos and Recap

 DM Telecanter cackles as player misfortune manifests in a tower of Jenga blocks.

Ha ha! A great weekend! SoCal Minicon 4 was damn awesome. It was twice as big as last year and everyone I talked to said they had a blast and want to come back in 2012. We had a few people this year fly in from back east and the midwest, which amazes me.

The first game I played in, on Saturday morning, was Steve Perrin's SPQR game. SPQR = Steve Perrin's Quest Rules - it's essentially Steve's house version of Runequest. The table was full of great players. For the first ~45 minutes or so Steve explained the historical background of his imaginary continent with the aid of large and heart achingly lovely hand drawn maps. It was great. I love grand introductions to sessions when they're done right. The adventure was an overland journey to locate a wizard's tower and I played a naive, claustrophobic, agoraphobic farm lad on his first foray. I spent a few pleasing hours in the game, which included a battle against three manticores who were trying to eat the party's horses. Sadly I had to drop out of the game early and leave the minicon for the day because of a family matter. I hear the group made it to the tower before dinner time. Nice work!
 
On Sunday morning I played in Telecanter's fine fine Swords & Wizardry session. If you read his blog (and you should) you know he is prone to frequent strokes of creative genius. This tendency of his was well on display in the session. The set up was that the party members were all infected by The Red Plague while staying in an inn, and so were inclined to set off together to the Redoubt of the Red Wizards to find a cure. The Red Wizards were reputed to have created the plague perhaps ~100 years earlier, you see. A sticky bit was that the plague causes infected souls to become hypersensitive to stress and anxiety. So sensitive, in fact, that if a victim is pushed too much she will go berserk. The brilliant game mechanic for this fragile state of sanity was Jenga. Whenever violence or other major stress happened in the session a player would have to draw out a Jenga block. Clockwise around the table the draws went. Every melee round. Every curse uttered. Every gasp of frustration from a player. We all knew if the blocks fell the party would go insane and all would be lost. BRILLIANT FUN! We spent much of the session acting like a bunch of plague-ridden Marcel Marceaus in a freezing cold invisible dungeon being attacked by crawling bones, ticks, and hoodoo stranglers, so there was lots of Jenga action. Of course we got a firehose in the face of all kinds of other creative telecanterian strokes, some of which I recognized from his blog writing. Clerics drawing bones (dominoes) for prayers, apologizing assailants, weird homespun ensorcellments. Halfway through the game Mobad declared aloud that it was the weirdest dungeon he's ever played in. A beautiful game, great fun, a privilege to play. (We won, too!)

For the Sunday afternoon session I ran a game of Dungeons and Dragons. Because a couple of the players had previously played in my Orccon Asteroid Crypts of the Xylbocx Starcult game I decided to make this session a direct continuation of that adventure. I'm a bit conflicted about how much I want to talk about the content of the session. I might like to run it again for another group so I don't want to give too much away. The location the players explored was the CACODAEMON TRANSLUCENT PLANETOID. This thing is a great spherical cyst of a few miles in diameter bearing a giant luminescent cacodaemon embryo at its center, much like a small sun lighting a small hollow world. On the inside shell of the cyst were some localities settled by various interests for various reasons. The adventuring party eventually ended up spending much of the session exploring the Cacodaemon Cyst Yolk Mine where hobbit miners drain and condense embryonic blood of the cacaodaemon from the gelatinous white yolk. (The cacodaemon yolk forms a small mountain range on the inside shell of the cyst.) I was privileged to have a group a super fun players and I want to thank them all for playing in my game. I am flattered that Telecanter wrote up a short recap of the session HERE.

There were many other sessions besides the three I was involved in. Here are pictures to prove it! (Many of these pictures were taken by Chainsaw, as credited).

Chillaxin' between killing imaginary monsters and purloining imaginary gold pieces. (R-L): Shaman, Grodog, Anna. (Photo: Chainsaw)

T. Foster's game. (CW from L): jallison, Cimmerian, Wheggi, Bedivere, Anna, T. Foster, Shaman (standing), grodog. (Photo: Chainsaw)

Steve Perrin's game. (CW from bottom left): Deanna (blue shirt), Cyclopeatron, Steve, grodog, Marcus, Telecanter. (Photo: Chainsaw)

 Perrin's game: (L-R): grodog, Marcus, Telecanter, Cyclopeatron's nose. (Photo: Chainsaw)

Perrin's game.

Joseph Goodman running Dungeon Crawl Classics. (Photo: Chainsaw)

Grodog running Castle Greyhawk.

Telecanter's game: (CW from bottom left): socalcanuck, William, Telecanter, Marcus, St. Yossarian, Summerisle, Mobad (black hat).