Saturday, November 9, 2019

Clean Up Time - Family time

I'm cleaning and sorting today. Here are some of my favorite pictures I rescued from various devices and platforms.

Due to the cleaning on my plate, I might be offline for a few days.

Epcot Family Picture on New Year's Eve 2019.
My phone glitched and my family had stepped away in the excitement.
Cool picture though. 

Leo the cat, as photographed by my daughter.
I use this for a "Personal Space" lesson at school. 
Benny's first Christmas

Our first Family Disney Trip, celebrating Catherine's final surgery. 
Cat as Fiona and Nate as Finn.


Tori mugging for Tim Bits.

A picture at Wegmans.

Tori's first Christmas

Me, many, many years ago.

My favorite picture at Disney.

Benny is chill.

I'm not sure what is happening here. Nate and Benny are playing something. 

Nathan, Paul and Catherine going to Home Coming.
This was the first and only year they will all be in high school together.

Kitty and I at Darien Lake. 

Kitty and I.

Catherine and I draw together. 

Paul's first day of work at summer camp, 2019.

Thursday, November 7, 2019

The Mac Is Not A Xerox Machine...

Back in June 2019, I released a scan of a Character Sheet I created back in the 80's.


I thought it was the best sheet I'd ever made or used. Still pretty true. You can pick up this one for yourself on DriveThruRPG. This file is pay what you want and it is strongly suggest that you use it before putting any cash down. If you like it come back and drop some change in the tip jar.

Tonight I was looking at it and wished that I still had the disc it came from so that I could have the deep black lines the originals had. Well, I don't have that no matter how much wish I did.

But I still have a Mac.

It turns out that either I have gotten much better at Mac Draw or the processing power of G4 is so much better than a 512K or Claris software has improved before its demise, that I can recreate this document. I started working on it tonight, I hope to have a new version done by Monday. Ah, Veteran's Day.

The new versions will be tacked on the old version of the file on DriveThruRPG, as a thank you to all the people who downloaded it. Many of you paid for it, and I really, really appreciate the support.

What you can expect is a faithful rendition of the old version, a new version with the classic 6 instead of 7 and a few bells and whistles add on, such as Acrobat Abilities added to the thieves table, a better encumbrance chart, AC chart, a space for mounts and pets, and a few other things.

Obviously, this will be more than one file. I might even make a faded version to match my scan of the original.

Tuesday, November 5, 2019

9% of a plan

I have this idea for a project. Its part of an idea. Like 9% of an idea for a project.

Anyway, this is the first 1%. I have been working on a map of a Roman city for my campaign.


The light gray streets outline an insula. By definition, there are 64 of these areas in the city. My idea is to make 64 maps, one per page. On the left hand pages, there will be a mini-map of the insula with a large diagram highlighting one structure from the insula.

So, that is like 4.5% of my idea. That would look something like this:


The right hand pages would be character studies for some of the more interesting people that live in that structure. There might me more than one character study. There would be a picture of said character(s). That is the other 4.5% of my idea of this project. Perhaps it would be ruleset agnostic or specific to AD&D or D&D.

Not sure.

Like I said, it's like 9% of a plan.

I still haven't decided if this is a book or a patreon thing or something else. Let me know what you think.

Monday, November 4, 2019

Old School Mass Combat? Fantasy Hack

How I loved this game. Fantasy Hack is an old school mass combat game which fits right in with D&D, Lewis and/or Tolkien settings. If you are into OSR, this could be your go to mass combat set.

The rules are totally retro feeling because they are printed in one color, black, on yellow paper. Published in 1993, they'll send you back a couple of decades.

While not perfect for every setting, the set manages to handle most fantasy settings. Give it a try.