Ostensible Cat

Yesterday was my birthday and I had a great time with my family and friends grilling out and enjoying their company. It is kind of bittersweet as I'll be leaving for GenCon and taraveling about the States visiting family and working. During that time I'll be away from Daisey and the kids. I've done an extensive amount of traveling in my life and leaving my family for more than a few days is never really easy. But GenCon is sure to be fun and going to Florida and spending some time with my 86 year old grandfather will be awesome. He's an amazing man and I'm looking forward to getting to spend some time with him. My Internet connections will probably be spotty and I'm sure much of my time will be otherwise consumed so I'm sure posting here will be sporadic. However, I'm on Google+ and that seems to be a bit more condusive to short updates so if you haven't already, add me to one of your circles and I'll do the same.

Yeah, I'll jump on the band wagon. But let's face it, some kids get a football when they are a kid or a guitar or whatever and that sets them down a certain path. I was given an AD&D Monster Manual and that has had a MASSIVE influence on my life. The only things that have come into my life that have even been close are my wife, kids, and punk rock, well and beer I suppose ;). At any rate, here's a toast to Gary. Keep rockin the dice all!

I never had the chance to play in an Arduin campaign. I've heard quite a few things (good and bad) about it over the years. I think I'm going to try and make a point of finding out a bit more about is at GENCON. For whatever reason, I've been stuck on this wacked out 70's vibe listening to stuff like Hawkind and other space rock stuff and 70's US punk like the Dead Boys and Richard Hell and watching Flash Gordon and other campy 70's sci-fi and fantasy. I'm not sure how much of that is currently informing my decisions I'm making about my Maedsid adventure, but I suspect reading Lovecraft and Moorcock and listening to crazy ass 70's rock is going to have some effect. I really wanting to look over the Arduin Grimoires while I'm gone and see what I think. Ah, who the hell knows. But anyways, I'm working on another map for Maedsid for one of the dimensional sublevels. I'm having fun. Floating arboral islands with open aired temple...

I'm mostly hoping to meet some of you folks that I talk to here o the Interwebs and get in on a few ad hoc gaming sessions. I'd like to spend some time at the OSR booth chatting as well as wondering around the hall. This is my first major con so I'm not really sure what to expect. I'm really looking forward to getting a set of Zocchi dice. I ordered some, but hell, I just really want to check out the Game Science booth and pick out some as well as get a dice cup and some other accoutrements. For those of you going, look me up and chat!

A nice little spotlight on our corner of the world today. Over at the Geek Dad blog, he mentions a couple of ways to get your name up in flashing lights in the RPG community . Like me, he is corrupting his son by involving him in various RPG projects ;). Adventurer Conquerer King and Fight On! are explicitly mentioned. Who knows, maybe oneday Bear Bingham will be on the rolls of RPG game designers/illustrators.

I think one of the greatest strengths of this whole nebulous OSR thing is the willingness of folks involved to share ideas and broaden their scope to encompass other ideas all the while still giving full credit and homage to the idea originators. I say that is hella cool. James Raggi is working on a compatability license that lets folks create compatable material with is Lamentations of the Flame Princess game. You can read the preliminaries here . I'm also really excited by the similar but complimentary domain game systems coming out from CKatulik at Hill Cantons ( Borderlands ) and the Adventurer Conqueror King system from Autarch. Also check out the sort of combine forces approach for the domain games over at Hill Cantons here . As for me, I'm looking forward to how I can incorporate these ideas into my Shdows of the Umbra Palace Adventure Path (which also overlaps with the Sea of O'Sr adventure path via my Maedsid adventure). Speaking of Maedsid, I'm not an...

Holy crap, that is coming up FAST! I'd hoped I be further along on a few things at this point, but oh well. I'm very much looking forward to getting some game time in and meeting people. This will be my first major convention ever so I'm not sure what to expect. Actually I have no expectations really I guess other than just to see what is out there and actually meet some of the gamer folk I communicate with online. Anything after that will be a bonus.