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 In classic fantasy, Githyanki are astral-sailing, sword-wielding, psionic zealots who escaped mind-flayer enslavement. To make them fit the Victorian aesthetic of Victorious, we can reimagine them as The Aether-Born : an ancient, aristocratic race of planar travelers who view Earth’s British Empire as a crude, amateurish imitation of their own cosmic dominion. This blog entry picks right upNeedleshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11243274667834930867noreply@blogger.com0

The post Video of the Day – Doctor Who: Rise of the Cybermen, 2006 appeared first on Blogtor Who.

Snake Homecoming #1 When an infamous outlaws arrives in Cambra, when the local bullies try to strong arm her, Eliza makes it her mission to teach them a lesson in…

Thr Metalocalypse was upon us as Dethklok stormed the gates of San Diego this past week at the Observatory North Park. Offering a dose of brutality and nostalgia, the band…

Garden State Comic Fest 2026 tickets are NOW ON SALE! Get you tickets now for Saturday June 27th and Sunday June 28th as Garden State Comic Fest returns to the…

Even in 1959, at the age of 5, a guy knew when he was being had. So Jimmy Olsen just coincidentally happens to be wearing a Superman costume for a…

Going on 10 years ago I got inspired by various sword and sorcery things to create a game called Dead Wizards. It's set in a sandy desert city. Very much a "sand and sorcery" idea inspired by mummy movies as well as Lankhmar and Conan and a bit of Al-Qadim.

My first pass at it was a hack of Swords & Wizardry where I think the main difference was that spells were cast by burning hit points. I ran that a couple of times.

A bit later I revised it and ran it again, briefly. Then I changed the whole system to be based on the image above, using the old to-hit matrix as the core mechanic of the game. Partly, this was a grognard response to anti-THAC0 folks. Just a bit of tongue in cheekiness.

I sometimes went hard to defend descending AC...

The idea shifted in 2020 and became a "let me see if I can make this a game based on those animalistic goons from the movie Heavy Metal." So I did. And it was called GOZR. I say all this because I've been working on Dead Wizards again after a lot of years in limbo. I want back to the last and fullest draft of the game, which was pretty good, actually. The rules in that version are essentially GOZR. I've abandoned the THAC0 matrix, mostly. But there is a small "to hit" matrix on the character sheet. Much simplified, it has 4 categories of difficulty (Basic, Arduous, Grueling, and Epic) with target numbers for each of them for only 2 basic skill areas (Cunning and Prowess). I think this is a really nice amalgam of GOZR's simple target number system and the old to-hit matrices. It's easy on the eyes and intuitive. You're trying to do a daring leap to grab a sacred relic off the giant demon's head? Sounds like an Arduous task, at least. You roll 1d20 vs. your Arduous Prowess target. Once set, the targets never change. But you can pick up various benefits here and there and acquire situational boosts. The idea here is to keep it player-facing and as math-less as possible. Target is 9, you need to roll a 9. You have an advantage? +1 to the roll. Oh, the demon takes notice and now is actively protecting the sacred relic from your grasp? It's now a Grueling task. So those are just some thoughts about the game in development. Clever observers will note that I still haven't produced that space fantasy game, ZSF. Hell's bells, West... you already playtested it, you already have Troika! based books about the same setting. What's the hold up? Yeah, I'll get to it. Inspiration is fickle, you know. 

By Brendan Barnett
Self Published
Generic/Universal
"Lower Levels"

If legends of the Golden Gargoyle are true it could mean infinite wealth for any who possess it. Trouble is, nobody has a clue where to find it.  That is, until a goblin falls out of the sky with a pouch of gold dust and a map to a hidden cave, high in the mountains. What you can make out amongst the blood splatters is very promising.

This forty page adventure uses sixteen pages to describe eight rooms in a low-conflict cave full of goblins. It’s meh, mostly because it uses forty pages to describe eight rooms in a low-conlift cave full of goblins. 

Great looking little pdf. And I assume print book? Nice cover. Pretty little isometric map inside that is itself an art piece, like you might see as a two page special insert in Dragon or Mad Magazine. Nice illustrations and a layout style that looks pretty with its use of word color and boxes and highlights and so forth. And not garish, in spite of its use of pinks and purples. Nice accomplishment there!

Did you want to buy a coffee table book? Cause this is an awfully nice looking coffee table book.

It’s just real hard to take this seriously as an actual adventure given the page count to encounter ratio. Forty pages. Eight rooms. In spreads, of course. What is it that the designer wanted to do? DId they want to write an adventure or did they want to make a great looking book? Room one. This is all of the text on the first page of room one: A large rectangular chamber. In the centre a stone gargoyle statue sits atop a tall pillar with the word ‘umop’ roughly carved into it. The word ‘uado’ is scratched above each of two sealed stone doors to the north and west. The ceiling (30′ up) is covered in spikes. The floor is littered with broken bones. Searching the floor yields 10gp in assorted coins and a silver ring (40gp). It bears the image of a human figure immersed in a river.” There’s some line breaks in there. The second page has open and down in normal and reverse print. Yeah, the words are mirrors and one opens the doors while the other does an anti-gravity. Two fucking pages. Two fucking pages for this. And this is the norm for the adventure. Simple rooms, spread out over two pages.

We can, I suppose, ignore this. We can simply accept that the designer decided two pages per room. What we get, then, is eight (or nine, for an A/B room) are some relatively simplistic rooms. The interactivity here is basic. I’m pretty sure there’s one ‘fight’, with Vampire Kinght[sic] Armour. Nobody present really cares that you are nosing around in the caves. I can’t help but think that this could have been much better i it were larger. The goblins, cultists, bats, tomb, all with zones in the dungeon, expanding the thing to something with more going on and room for the adventure to breathe. 

The language used, for the room descriptions. Is rather plain. A large rectangular room. THis is not the height of language use to evoke imagery. The exception is the isometric map. It’s a pretty great art piece, harkening back to all of those Bat Cave and Hall of Justice isometric pieces from comics, or, the Starship Warden piece I have hanging on my call. Very evocative, but not exactly something you can run from. (There is a more traditional map as well, to run from, the isometric piece not being the most clear on room connections.) 

I can’t say it’s true or not, but it certainly FEELS like the isometric map was the starting point of this adventure. As if it were created and then the rooms followed on. Like the adventure, proper, was secondary to this and/or inspired by the art piece. That doesn’t have to be bad, but in this case the adventure just doesn’t feel worked enough. 

It remains interesting to me the many ways that the various subcultures produce bad adventures. Starting from bland, or assembly line, or wordy, or mini combats, or rote, or art, or layout, or, or, or.

https://pocket-sized-perils.itch.io/grotto-of

This is $5, Aussie, at Itch.io

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      Welcome back my fellow homage hunters. For a long time, homage covers were usually homages of comics of the past. They were mostly homages to the classics…

Robert Kirkman is reportedly bringing the legendary Gold Key heroes to Skybound Entertainment and Image Comics, a move that could dramatically reshape the independent superhero landscape. According to industry reports…

 In ACKS II, classes are built using a point-allocation system distributed across four categories: Fighting, Thieving, Divine, and Arcane. Demi-human races require purchasing a "Race slot" that modifies these allocations and establishes baseline racial traits. This blog post entry picks right up from Integrating Adventurer Conqueror King System II (ACKS II) with the legendary, chaotic, Needleshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11243274667834930867noreply@blogger.com0

In the Berlaith region of the content of Parsulan, there is a magical body of water known as the Prismatic Lake. The reason for the name is obvious: clear as it is (and its waters as remarkable pellucid), they are tinted with a rainbow of colors. The reason for the lake's unusual appearance is the naturally occurring manastones that are embedded in its depths that leak arcane energy into the water.

The lake covers nearly 40 acres and is near circular. Scholars believe it was formed by the unlikely interaction of a shadow cyst emergence causing a collapse into an underground space beneath, possibly an attenuated dungeon root. The heart of the cyst was lost, causing it to burst, but the resultant magical release altered the landscape.

However, it came to be the Prismatic Lake draws wizards and other adventurers hoping to harvest the manastones within. It's not an easy task, given the strange effects the magical energies can have on divers in addition to the problem of working the stones free underwater. Monsters are also attracted to the stones, so they pose another danger.

A (somewhat) easier target for adventurers out to make quick coin is catching the lake's fish. Several highly unusual varieties live there, each with magical properties. Alchemists and magical researchers will pay handsomely for specimens, particularly alive. Would-be fishers should beware: many of the fish are dangerous due to the same magical properties that make them sought after.

The post Video of the Day – Doctor Who: Fury From The Deep (Animated), 1968 appeared first on Blogtor Who.

Get ready for Battles in Time across the modern era as Master Replicas launch Obliterator 

Get ready for the most deadly Battles in Time yet, as the Obliterator series arrives from Master Replicas. As announced on today’s episode of The Whoniverse Show, Obliterator builds on the success of the recent Reintroduction set to bring the characters of Doctor Who into a whole new dimension.

Battles in Time originally ran from 2006 to 2009. Yet it continues to be one of the most fondly regarded elements of Doctor Who merchandise this century. Now that Master Replicas have regenerated the range of trading game cards, fans can finally collect cards for their favourite heroes and villains from the Matt Smith era on. Based on the previews that Blogtor Who has seen, we’re in for a gorgeous treat of some truly stunning designs.

Blogtor seized the opportunity to chat with Master Replicas’ Creative Director, Ben Robinson, about the new series.

 

The Battles in Time Shreek card (c) Master Replicas The upcoming sets of Battle of Times includes cards for every era of the show, while the original only went up to Series Four. How did you decide the spread of cards between eras, and how many to devote to each one? Not quite every era – at least not yet. The Obliterator set is everything since Journey’s End. Before we did anything else, we wanted a card for all the Doctors we’ve meat since Ten regenerated into Eleven (there are quite a few)… Then talking to the BBC, we naturally thought about the most recent characters from this second RTD era, not least because they are visually very cool but also because they are fresh in people’s minds. Monsters have always been the foundation of Battles in Time so we naturally tended toward those.  After that it was a case of picking some of the most memorable characters, knowing that there would be more sets to follow. Again, we wanted to make sure we had something from each Doctor since Journey’s End. I’m sure there will be people who wish we’d done some specific characters, but I promise this is just the beginning and they are on the way. The Battles in Time Pting card (c) Master Replicas In looking through the photo archive for the new cards, did you come across any fun surprises? I’d forgotten just how much photography we had. We were still commissioning our own shoots until well into the Eleventh Doctor’s time so there was a lot to work with. The shoots are always quite entertaining – some actors particularly enjoy  playing around – but in terms of what made it on to the cards, I think the Pting is particularly great. Something about that card just makes me smile. The Battles in Time ‘The Woman’ card (c) Master Replicas Do you have any favourite little detail in the new cards that you suspect many people will miss? The cards are numbered randomly and because these are New Battles in Time cards, we started from Number 1 again. As I was numbering them, I realised that meant I could make the mysterious woman from 73 Yards card number… 73. The Battles in Time Rassilon card (c) Master Replicas Which card generated the most debate amongst the team about what attributes it should have? There were two things that generated debate. If someone has regenerated should they keep the same scores? In the end we decided that, no if a Time Lord regenerates, they are a bit different. But for me the biggest debate was whether Rassilon should be more intelligent than the Doctor. We know the Doctor should be able to beat him – ultimately, we know the Doctor can beat everybody; there’s always a way – but Rassilon is this great figure in Time Lord history, who was instrumental in inventing time travel. He’s got to be pretty clever, hasn’t he? Is the Doctor really on that level? After a bit of consultation with the BBC we came to the conclusion that answer is, “Yes, they are!” Battles in Time: Obliterator Get ready to expand your Doctor Who Battles in Time with Obliterator!

 

The post Doctor Who: Battles in Time – Obliterator is Coming! appeared first on Blogtor Who.

MooglyCAL2026 Block 11 is a meditative mosaic square by Erin of Juniper and Oakes! The Crossroads Mosaic Crochet Square is a relaxing overlay project ready for your special touch! Get all the details for this free crochet along, and the free pattern link below! Disclaimer: This post includes affiliate links; materials provided by Local Crafts. […]

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 In the gritty, sword-and-sorcery framework of The Sword of Cepheus 2nd Edition, Lord Darkness from Ridley Scott’s 1986 film Legend functions perfectly as a lesser god, an arch-fiend, or a manifestation of absolute Eldritch Chaos.True to the simulationist, highly lethal nature of the Cepheus Engine, Darkness is not just a high-stat brick to be fought in an open field. He is an Needleshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11243274667834930867noreply@blogger.com0

We've made it through May - and it's time for another Crochet and Catch Up with Moogly! It's been a busy couple of weeks behind the scenes, and I've got some fun stuff to share! Join me for a simple crochet chat and behind-the-scenes peeks. Join in live, or watch the recording at your convenience […]

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