Hiatus

[please note that I'm making this post with my ipad and it hates blogger and screws up the formatting] I'm on a summer holiday with the wife for the next week. Regular blogging will resume when I return. Yes, I'll be taking a draft of BMII with me for revision and editing :) Here's a couple BMII tidbits to hold you over: I've decided to extend the numbering of the barrow mounds from BMI to BMII. So instead of 16 being the Barrowmoor (in BMI) it will now be a mound on its own and then there will be 35 additional barrow mounds in BMII, for a total of 50 mounds overall. Huzzah! Many of these have multiple rooms. I'll also have a new hex-map of the barrows so your players can hex-crawl through the mist before getting eaten by ravenous monsters. LOTS of interesting coolness including additional hidden points of entry for higher level characters, a new mound type, treasure, etc. I haven't seen a copy myself (yet) but rumour has it Jim Holloway is very pleased with his color painting for BMII. I can't wait for The Reveal! Have a great week.

Reminder: Barrowmaze II Spell Contest

Just a reminder of the Barrowmaaze II Spell Contest outlined below. There are some excellent entries so far. Feel free to enter more than once.

A recent OSR post brought the Jack Vance "Dying Earth" spell name generator to my attention.

This thing is magically delicious: http://generators.christopherpound.com/#dyingearth

I'd like to run a "Create a Spell Contest" for inclusion in BMII. I've already have a bunch of my own (including Baltron's Effusive Bloodboil and Fennril's Exquisite Strangulation to name two) but I thought it might be fun to run a contest. The winner(s) will receive a free pdf of Barrowmaze II. If you are already getting BMII I'll send you some extra custom dice. Cool?

Here's how you participate:
1. Go to the spell generator and pick a spell name that bleeds classic fantasy adventure.
2. Create a spell to fit the spell name. Don't be functional, be creative and feel free to elaborate.
3. Post it in the comments section of this post.
4. Help spread the word.

I'll choose the winners on August 1, 2012.

Let me know if I've forgotten anything.

Barrowmaze Last Night

Last night's session was pretty interesting. initially I was going to audio record it. I didn't, but I should have. The party had been following the pulses of the Fount of Law in an attempt to find the Pit of Chaos. They came across a set of large sealed double doors. Thinking this the possible entrance to the pit, they entered but instead found it to be the Vault of The Chosen, Nergal's elite clerical sect. They 10' foot poled their way east after knocking down a bricked-up wall. They came to a room and, despite tapping the floor, the body weight of the cleric Cromwell and the dwarf Kelg made the entire floor giveway in a trap. After landing on their asses a great abomination of bone came forth with a antlered deer skull and four arms! Winning initiative it hit Kelg and Cromwell who were prone. Cromwell attempted to cast the next round but this was wasted by a strike from a scimitar. Kelg was hit several times and drank a Potion of Extra-Healing to keep himself alive as the halfling Snake Pliskin fired sling stones and the fighter Sol stood agog holding a rope. Kelg and Cromwell were hit several more times and it looked like curtains for the two of them. Kelg decided to drink his Potion of Growth. With several sling stone hits by Snake, and three double damage hits by Kelg, they managed to drop the dreaded Bone Golem. Then the action began lol Employing the "One More Room" approach, the party entered the other bricked-up room. Sol poled around the walls of the room and returned safely. They noticed that the ceiling of this domed room appeared to sparkle like star constellations. Cromwell, the fifth level cleric, stepped into the center of the room for a closer look and...fell into a bottomless pit! Oh yeah, did I mention he was carrying The Fount of Law? The game certainly has a way of keeping things interesting...

Interview at This Just In From Gencon

I was asked to Interview for The One Cool Person to Meet at Gencon Interview Series a few nights ago. It was fun. It's good and short (9mins). If you are interested in having a listen you can find it here.

Topics include:

•What drew Greg to OSR play and Labyrinth Lord
•How Barrowmaze developed organically in play
•The reasons behind the layout of the Barrowmaze dungeon
• The success of the Barrowmaze II kickstarter
•Finding the right balance in scheduling your Gen Con
•Greg is excited to check out the OSR booth at Gen Con

Barrowmaze I Hi-Res Maps now up on RPGnow

The new Barrowmaze Hi-Res maps crafted by artist Cory Hamel are now available on RPGnow at the address below. You'll get both Classic Blue and Black/White maps in both PDF and JPG formats for maximum awesomeness!!! Staying in tradition the maps are Satanically priced.

http://www.rpgnow.com/product/103565/Barrowmaze-Maps-%28Hi-Res%29

Barrowmaze I Map Look-See

Cory Hamel and I are putting the finishing touches on the Barrowmaze I map. I'll anticipate putting that up on rpgnow as soon as later today/tomorrow.

In the meantime, here's a first look-see snippet at the map in classic blue and black/white. I have these printed out on 11x17 and they are pretty swank. Of course these snippets don't do the map full justice and show all the dungeon-delving action to be had, but they'll give you a good idea of what we are shootting for.

Cory is also working hard on the BMI and II combined map for the Indiegogo campaign (when I'm not distracting him with art requests :))

Barrowmaze I

As progress on BMII has moved along, the idea of revising and reformatting BMI has been growing in my mind. I'm not try trying to make extra work, but there are things I want to do like include hyphenation, tweak the gutter margin, add more art, etc. BMII will have many of these already addressed so the two books will look more uniform. Most importantly, the high-res map for BMI is almost complete (blue and b/w). I want to put put those up on rpgnow as soon as Monday. I've printed them out on 11x17 and they are super sweet. When I put the new version of BMI up I'll add some thing new to the cover to mark it as such.

Barrowmaze Session Last Night

So we played BM last night. The party found the Fount of Law last session and are intent to follow Sir Guy's instructions to find and destroy the Pit of Chaos. They headed back into BM and immediately ran into a group of Necromancers of Set. The cultists had four zombies to act as skirmishers and a Runic Golem for muscle. The battle raged and eventually the leader of the cultists fled after a Silence spell had been cast. The party continued north and east eventually coming to a room filled with supporting columns depicting female valkyrie-style warriors. They used their Wand of Secret Door Detection and found one. Two of the columns immediately animated and attacked. Sadly Sol's preferred weapon of choice -- a dagger +2 -- shattered against the hard stone of the construct. Kelg attacked with his mighty warhammer +1 and needing over 35% to keep his weapon from being destroyed rolled a 36% (no bs). Another highlight moment was Cromwell the cleric reading a runic tablet, rolling a natural 1, and then making his save versus death or die. Phew! Some close calls this session. We'll get a more thorough report on Red Box Niagara as soon as Alex is sufficiently motivated :)

Rule #2: Double Tap

I did something completely different the other day. I was invited to a firing range. I have never shot firearms so it was a completely new experience. I've had family serve in the British military, so it's not completely foreign either.

If you are in the US and reading this, you might need a little background. In Canada, weapons are not as widely available and are tightly regulated. That's one of the reasons why the annual death toll by firearms is so drastically different between the two countries. Also we don't have gun ownership tied to our sense of self because we negotiated our Independence (yeah, we are hardcore like that) rather than having a revolution. So if you meet a Canadian that has a conservative view of guns and gun ownership, that's likely part of the reason why. We haven't tied it to our identity in the same way.

We started with the low calibre stuff and moved up from there. This was a seven shooter revolver (38?).

I'm not going to lie, I REALLY wanted to shoot the M1 rifle when I saw it. That's the weapon you often see in WWII movies and in video games. I wasn't very good at it. I was consistently below the target. I did seem to take naturally to the single shot rifle you see on the right and it gave me a nice grouping on the lower left black box in the picture below this one. I believe the distance was 25m (82 feet).

YeeeeeeeeeHaaaaw! I'm gonna git me some zombies with my trusty M1 peacemaker!

I had a great instructor, tried to listen closely, follow the safety rules, and really enjoyed it. I can now scratch firearms off my bucket list.

Let me leave you with Zombie Survival Rule #20:

It’s a marathon, not a sprint, unless it’s a sprint, then sprint.

Recent Barrowmaze Session

First, I apologize for the dearth of posts lately. I'm spent between preparing BMII and playing. Plus my kids are hitting a wall as the end of the school year approaches, so I need to be on top of them pretty well 24/7. Also, becuase ipads/ blogger are a pain, I can't seem to insert spaces when Imake a blog post. So, we played BM last night. In the last session the part met the ghost of Sir Guy who implored them to seek the Fount of Law. This session eneded with them finding the Fount - making Alex the player of Cromwell, the lawful cleric of St. Ygg, a happy ecclesiastic. The session actually started with fireworks as Arnd Cobblestone the Dwarven cleric henchman was killed by a crabs (that shit's everywhere), as was Alson "Don't call me Alison" the man-at-arms. The party also had a random encounter on the way back and forth to BM with two 8HD Shambling Mounds - they bravely ran away, away. Those were the highlights. We need to get Alex on those session reports (free XP anyone?).