Mobile DM'ing Equipment - Dice

With my public FLBS Labyrinth Lord game getting started soon, it strikes me that I may need to invest in a few more dice than I currently own.  I recently revealed how many dice I possess, and it is not really a giant collection: 

 
What I have now is enough for myself and a few players, but maybe not quite enough to go around if I get a large number of dice-less neophytes arriving at my gaming table later this month. 

When it comes to new die purchasing, I immediately think of Chessex Dice. Look, for example, at these:

Or these:

 

Or perhaps it is finally GameScience time.  I have read the posts about their quality and accuracy, and I am intrigued by some of the "oddball" selections like the d7 and the d5.  Yet for my present purposes -- bulking out the collection for general, public use -- maybe Chessex is the way to go?

Any comments?

P.S. Note to self: I should also look up where the local game / hobby shop is in the Rochester, NY area, so maybe I can buy these dice from a FLGS.

FLBS Game - First Meeting Materials

To prepare for my new public Labyrinth Lord gaming group's initial orientation meeting on Sunday September 18 at Lift Bridge Books, I have started gathering together some introductory materials to share with prospective participants who show up that day. The stuff I plan to bring along for show-and-tell and distribution to potential players includes:

- Examples of the game itself, including copies of the Moldvay-Cook B/X books (to show where we came from), plus two hardcover copies of Labyrinth Lord Revised, for show-and-tell only. Yes, I ordered a second hardcover copy of LL from lulu.com just for this group, that way I can keep one copy behind the screen and have another copy out on the table for player use. As I have stated before, hardback gaming books are the only way to go for me, partially for bibliophiliac reasons, yes, but mainly since they lie flat when opened on the game table.*

- A sign-up sheet asking for participant email addresses 

- Handout: Meeting agenda including my contact information and links to Finch's Primer, the LL pdf download, and the Grognardia blog.

- Handout: hard copy of Matt Finch's Old-School Primer -- player section only (i.e., pp. 1-7).

- Handout: CDs with the LL no-art pdf and Finch's Primer pdf on it

That's it! I may also bring along some dice to that first meeting, we'll see. In any case, I should have enough stuff there to provide a basic intro to the game and to make neophytes as well as old hands feel welcome. At least I think so. Any thoughts or suggestions?

--
* Another solution to this dilemma was presented to me at OSRCon, when Marc brought a spiral-bound photocopy of the art-free downloadable pdf of the LL rules to my Friday morning game. I subsequently borrowed his spiral-bound copy for player use at my Saturday afternoon game. Thanks Marc!

Review: LotFP WFRP Referee

This is Part 3 of a three-part review of James Raggi's Lamentations of the Flame Princess Weird Fantasy Role-Playing Grindhouse Edition. Part 1 reviewed the game's Tutorial book; Part 2 the Rules and Magic volume. This third and final installment will discuss Referee. [Note: This review will NOT take in "A Stranger Storm," the adventure included on pp. 77-95 of Referee.]

First, the cover. While I stated in my review of Tutorial that I liked its cover the most of the three Grindhouse tomes, Peter Mullen's superb cover of Referee may give that one a run for its money. Mullen has a lively, vaguely Erol Otus-esque style that really jumps off the page, and his Referee cover captures quite an interesting moment indeed. Well done!

The Referee book itself opens with prose I tend to associate with Raggi's writings on the Lamentations of the Flame Princess blog. He even admits right at the outset of the Referee volume that "this book is much more loosely written than the other material in this game. This is me, the author, James Edwrad Raggi IV, talking to you, the reader." Hooray for that! In some ways, this is the kind of prose that I have been waiting for (but have seen less of) in the other volumes of the game. If I am going to invest in James Raggi's Grindhouse game, I surely expect to get a healthy dose of James Raggi's unique gaming worldview and balls-out expository style. While the Grindhouse rules themselves (and of course the notorious illos) are obviously an expression of Raggi's POV, the first two rule books are written in a very straightforward way, for clarity, and while that is a plus when it comes to understanding the rules, it is a minus for those of us who enjoy and take inspiration from Raggi's usual no-holds-barred writerly voice.*

This Referee book is chock-full of that engaging voice plus a wealth of insightful perspectives on what it means to be an effective old-school referee.  In fact, should I wish to produce a non-system-specific "Primer on Old-School Refereeing," I could do a lot worse than to simply excerpt out pp. 2-6, 11-33, 45-46, and 62-68 from this volume.  It's that good.

After a page of introductory remarks, the Referee tome launches right into the basics of Refereeing, covering a wide array of relevant topics of which I will simply gloss over some favorite highlights:

- "When the dice go badly for the players, they should be thinking about how to not let a roll of the die be the sole determiner of their fates. And when the dice go a little too well for the players, the Referee should note what he needs to do to prevent a single die roll from determining the course of an entire adventure" (p.18). Raggi is nothing if not fair-minded, strongly advocating the roll of the dice over Referee fiat. No fudging the dice!

- "In-character favors and personal connections are a type of reward that isn't commonly used in this sort of game, but in a continuing campaign this could be extremely valuable" (p. 19). I use these kinds of "rewards" all the time, and appreciate Raggi mentioning them here.

- The whole section on "Variety" (pp. 19-20) is just golden, containing advice like: "Change elements of your adventures, and change them often. [. . .] Keeping a campaign fresh through constant variety is the key to maintaining interest, for the players and for yourself." Indeed! This is an important idea yet is not always given this much emphasis in other RPG'ing rulebooks I've seen.

- Here is Raggi's manifesto on "Railroading" (p. 20), reprinted verbatim:

Repeat after me:

"My adventures and campaigns will have no pre-set endings. Characters are not required to act as I wish them to act during the course of the game. It is natural player behavior to trash scenarios and take the game to places unforeseen."

He even prints this a second time, exhorting the reader to recite it aloud. Raggi means business here, and this is absolutely the right thing to emphasize. I only wish I had read (and recited aloud) these words back in 1992 or so; it would have saved me a few disastrous sessions during that heady period.

- In his section on "Using Published Adventures" (pp. 31-32), which I appreciated a lot, Raggi makes the following important observation: "Some referees are great creative thinkers and make excellent adventures, but not every Referee can manage these things. Running a great game requires different skills that creating a great adventure. Never feel like you're doing something wrong just because you didn't write everything that you use in your campaign."

- Then there's the "Don't Change Anything Else" section (p. 32), in which Raggi again reiterates his view on the value of using other people's modules: "The very advantage of using adventures written by others is defeated if you change every detail to more closely match your style. After you take away the elements that could harm your campaign and change the names and other such details to fit your campaign, leave the adventures alone. Run them in the spirit they were written." I struggle with this, liking to tinker with other folks' modules, but I absolutely agree with Raggi here in principle.

Next Referee tackles issues relating to "The Campaign," including:

- "As characters travel, more areas that began as mere concepts can be filled in and become true locations. Your world will grow organically" (p. 33). Hear, hear! This is exactly how world-creation should occur, IMO. For example, I didn't know jack shit about the Minochian town of Fortinbras prior to my current party's setting up home base there; we have co-created it through play. This is the essence of sandbox play and a superb strategy for older-school, lower-prep GM's.

- I am quite fond of the section on "NPCs" (pp. 45-46), and would particularly like to single out this sharp little tidbit for honorable mention: "Quick rule of thumb: Average NPCs that don't need a name unless a player asks just have average stats. The important NPCs get +3 in modifiers to spread around. [. . .] Next -step-down NPCs get +2 in modifiers, and more common 'lieutenant' personalities just get a +1."

- On page 46 I noted an in-text reference to the back cover NPC charts, which are GREAT:

A sample of LotFP Referee's awesome back-cover NPC table.

- A listing (with brief commentary) of some of the key OSR publishers (pp. 74-76), including Basic Fantasy RPG, Black Blade, Brave Halfling, Frog God, Goblinoid, OSRIC, and a few others. This is a smart thing to include, a nice resource for somebody (especially a Referee) just entering the OSR end of the hobby.

- BEST TABLE EVER (p. 76), which gives AC equivalents for LotFP, Labyrinth Lord, S&W (ascending and descending), OSRIC, and Basic Fantasy RPG. Well done!

In sum, this is the best of the three LotFP WFRP books, IMO.  It is certainly the most "Raggian" of the three volumes, and I think that it poignantly reminds us that Raggi is particularly insightful when it comes to effective techniques to use behind the screen.**  Not to diminish the Grindhouse game itself, but Referee is where its author really shines and I could easily see this book being sold as a stand-alone volume, perhaps in a slightly abridged version re-titled James Raggi's Essential Referee's Handbook.   I doubt Mr. Raggi has any interest in such a project, though, so for now I must simply recommend that you BUY GRINDHOUSE in order to acquire this book -- and the elegant, extremely well-produced game system to which it belongs.

--
*Raggi even says of himself on p. 2 of Referee that "I am a far better writer than I am a Referee, for sure" -- an interesting comment, to which I return when I talk about my experience of Raggi-as-Referee in the other footnote to this review.
** I can vouch for this firsthand, having played in one of the online playtest groups for "A Stranger Storm," the adventure included in Referee.  Raggi is an absolute delight as a DM, and is especially good at acting out the roles of the NPCs.

Mobile DM'ing Equipment - Minis vs. Card Tokens

Image copyright 2011 by Kelvin Green

I got some great comments on my recent post about possibly investing in minis for Con / public game play. One of the ideas that got suggested was that rather than going for 3D minis at all, I could simply use card tokens (like that pictured above) on my new battle mat instead.

There do seem to be a number of advantages in going this route:

- card tokens are surely cheaper than 3D minis, yes?

- card tokens travel easily and take up far less space than minis

- Kelvin has some here for free download

- At least in theory, one could prevail upon (or literally hire out) artists from the OSR blogosphere (Hi Kelvin!) to create custom tokens for specific monsters and PC types (e.g., rodians) one needs

Is this line of thinking blasphemy, as Christian suggests?

As a counterpoint, here is EGG on the subject of minis:

USE OF MINIATURE FIGURES WITH THE GAME

The special figures cast for ADVANCED DUNGEONS & DRAGONS add color to play and make refereeing far easier. Each player might be required to furnish painted figures representing his or her player character and all henchmen and/or hirelings included in the game session. Such distinctively painted figures enable you to immediately recognize each individual involved. Figures can be placed so as to show their order of march, i.e., which characters are in the lead, which are in the middle, and which are bringing up the rear. Furthermore, players are more readily able to visualize their array and plan actions while seeing the reason for your restrictions on their actions. Monster figures are likewise most helpful, as many things become instantly apparent when a party is arrayed and their monster opponent(s) placed. Furnishing such monsters is probably best undertaken as a joint effort, the whole group contributing towards the purchase of such figurines on a regular basis. Be very careful to purchase castings which are in scale! Out of scale monsters are virtually worthless in many cases. As a rule of thumb, HO scale is 25 mm = 1 actual inch = 6’ in scale height or length or breadth.

Figure bases are necessarily broad in order to assure that the figures will stand in the proper position and not constantly be falling over. Because of this, it is usually necessary to use a ground scale twice that of the actual scale for HO, and squares of about 1 actual inch per side are suggested. Each ground scale inch can then be used to equal 3% linear feet, so a 10’ wide scale corridor is 3 actual inches in width and shown as 3 separate squares. This allows depiction of the typical array of three figures abreast, and also enables easy handling of such figures when they are moved. While you may not find it convenient to actually use such figures and floor plans to handle routine dungeon movement, having sheets of squares for encounter area depiction will probably be quite helpful. If you do so, be certain to remember that ground scale differs from figure scale, and when dealing with length, two man-sized figures per square is quite possible, as the space is actually 6 scale feet with respect to length. This is meaningful when attacking a snake, dragon, etc. if characters are able to attack the creature’s body length. With respect to basically bipedal, erect opponents, scale will not be a factor.

Details of preparation and painting of miniature figures for the game are not germane to this work. Your hobby supplier will have an assortment of small brushes and paints for such purposes, and you may inquire there as to the best techniques of painting.

Dungeon Master's Guide pp. 10-11

Any thoughts anyone?

Session 41: Saving Lives, Exposing Demons

Vivuli: "Fuck everyone else!"

Innominus: "That's our motto."

This session took place on Thursday, August 18 and included PCs Innominus (Clr 6), Hazel (Ftr 4 / MU 4), Yor (Dwf 5), and Vivuli (Assassin 5 / MU 2). 

We picked up right where the previous session left off, in the King Hargon Inn, the dwarven dining and drinking establishment in Fortinbras, on the morning of Day 149 of the party's Arandish adventures.*

Last session, the party decided that their over-arching plan would be to venture back to Farn Junction and attempt to purchase the "haunted" (and currently shut down) Frigglestone Brothers' mine. However, since Farn Junction lies a couple days' travel north of Fortinbras, the party started out this session talking over their immediate next move, and decided to head out east of town to Prince Arkus' country manor house (formerly the late Baron Kaminster's country manor house).

No sooner had they decided upon a course of action and headed eastward out of town than it began to snow rather heavily.**  By the time they reached the stone-walled country manor of Prince Arkus, acting Baron of Rogaland, visibility was limited by snowfall and the PCs drove their wagon up to the Manor Gate through four inches of fairly dense snow.  Just before the group reached the area of the Manor proper, Hazel turned herself invisible, a state in which she would stay for the remainder of the session.

Baronet LeForge, a local aristocrat and soldier, met the party at the Manor's heavy iron gate and asked their purpose for being there.  Yor stated that he was there to see the Prince on behalf of the most prominent local Dwarven families (e.g., the Grimmbricks, the Frigglestones, and his own), to which the Baronet replied that Prince Arkus was ill and could not receive visitors.  Innominus then stepped forward and offered his services as a Divine healer, here to help the Prince.  After sending a runner into the house to make an inquiry, Baronet LeForge ordered the Gate be opened and waved the group into the circular inner courtyard. 

Arkus' servants took their wagon and horses around to the stables, and the party was shown into the Manor.  Entering the front hall, Hazel immediately noticed, at the top of a stairwell to the second floor, a robed man she felt sure matched the description of the wizard who had followed her on the town streets the night before.  Vivuli also scanned the whole area with his X-ray vision ring as he passed through the foyer; he spotted a secret door hidden in the wall to the left of the stairwell. That secret door led to yet another stairwell leading down, underground, underneath the Manor.

While the rest of the party were shown into a parlor [marked with "X" on Map 1], Hazel, still invisible, sneaked up the stairs and followed the familiar-seeming robed man left down a hallway.  Beastarr, Innominus' bobcat familiar, lingered back and distracted the foyer guards so they would not hear Hazel's invisible passing and ascent.

MAP 1: A hastily composed map of Prince Arkus' country manor's foyer.  X marks the parlor where most of the PCs waited for Grand Vizier Krock, and circled x's indicate posted guards.    

The robed fellow entered a door on the left side of the hallway and sat down at a table therein, picking up a book. Hazel cast ESP in anticipation of invading his thoughts.  Once she arrived at the door, cracked it open, and scanned his mind, she found that he was thinking about what he was reading: a turgid romance adventure novel about an aristocrat who goes around in a mask, fighting sea pirates and sea monsters and having steamy sexual encounters with all manner of ladies he encounters.  Nonplussed, Hazel retreated back down the hall, looking across the second-floor landing to the other side: an ornate archway leading to the plushly carpeted Regal Apartments, flanked by two heavily armed Royal Guards.  Hazel sneaked back down the stairs.

Meanwhile, the rest of the party was joined in the downstairs parlor by Grand Vizier Krock, Prince Arkus' closest adviser and also, incidentally, one of the world's most enthusiastic Uncle Junkal fans (see Session 35).  And while the much-beloved rodian bard was not actually present this session, Krock nevertheless recalled Innominus, Yor & Co. from their prior heroics in Farn Junction.  So he was just thrilled to see the PCs, and asked how he could be of service.

Yor and Innominus convinced Krock that they should be allowed to see the sick Prince and try to help him, even if (as Krock tried to explain) Father Azamondius of the Kaladarian Temple of the Brothers of Carcoon was on his way to Fortinbras for the same purpose, expected to arrive that very afternoon. Innominus, insisting that there was no time to waste, persuaded Krock to let he and Yor upstairs into the Royal Chambers. They went, accompanied by the Vizier.

Vivuli, meanwhile, asked one of the guardsmen where the crapper was, and was told it lay just off the kitchen and banquet hall, just across the foyer [see room marked "WC" on Map 1].  Vivuli went into the "chamber pot closet" and then cast Conjure Familiar, attracting a small monkey (an Emperor Tamarin to be exact) named "Fu Man" to be his new animalistic compadre.  Accompanied by Fu Man, Vivuli sneaked silently out of the toilet, approached the area of the secret door under the stairs, and investigated, inspecting the latch mechanism etc.  It appeared free from traps, just hidden. 

Upstairs, Innominus cast detect magic in the chamber where Prince Arkus lay bedridden. A plain-looking ring on Arkus' bedside table glowed, as did all the weapons and armor used by the four Royal Guards posted in the room.

Next the cleric of Endra cast detect evil, and the only thing in the whole room that glowed were the small black pockmarks all over the Prince's neck and face -- they radiated very strong evil indeed.

Downstairs, an invisible Hazel joined Vivuli at the secret door, and, after the assassin / magic-user popped the door open, stumbling clumsily against the wall to make it appear accidental, the fighter / magic-user and the monkey slipped through the secret door and onto the unlit stairwell below. Hazel closed the door behind them and they quietly descended as Vivuli continued his stumble, concealing their passage from the guards.

At the bottom of the flight of stairs was a three-way intersection, with passages headed left (south), straight ahead (west), and right (north).

MAP 2: The underground passages beneath the Manor, also hastily drawn.

Hazel stood still at the intersection a moment and listened. From the south passage came the faint sound of someone playing a clarinet, practicing the same five-note progression over and over. From the west, a faint but steady dripping noise.  And most ominously, from the north, the dull, irregular sound of someone being choked or strangled.

UPSTAIRS, while Innominus of Endra prepared to work his healing magic on the inert Prince, Yor pulled Grand Vizier Krock aside and raised a delicate but pertinent matter: "The Prince is a very sick man.  Who would succeed him as Lord of Minoch should he not survive?"  The Vizier replied: "Since Prince Arkus has no blood successors, the Right of Succession passes to the highest ranking nobleman in the land, which at present would be Count Dooku."

Innominus, not having direct access to the cure disease spell, prayed a divine prayer to Endra, his diety, beseeching the demigod for the power to heal Prince Arkus. Due to the power and conviction of his prayer, his wish was granted, and Innominus cast cure disease upon the fallen prince.

The black spots on Arkus' face and neck began to congeal together under his skin, oozing up toward his mouth, then spraying out of his mouth like animated black vomit. The black vomit-thing protruding from the prince's gob took on, for a split-second, the visage of a horrible, fiery demon, then vanished completely. The bedridden prince regained some color to his previously ashen cheeks, and everyone in the room breathed a sigh of relief. Innominus had saved Prince Arkus' life. The Vizier rejoiced and offered the 10,000gp Honorarium originally intended for Father Azamondius of Carcoon to Innominus and the Temple of Endra instead.

Meanwhile, UNDERGROUND, Hazel approached a door down the north passageway, from whence the strangling sound came. By the time she silently opened the door to peek in, the sound seemed to have changed to a horrible chewing or crunching. Indeed, inside a dark chamber beyond were two gargoyle-like demons, winged and black with four arms each and faintly glowing red eyes. They were hunched over the carcass of a Royal Guardsman, eating lustily. One of the demons glanced up when Hazel cracked the door open, but she was invisible and the gargoyle-demon seemed not to care.

Hazel closed the door, retreated to the intersection, and pointed her wand of trap detection down the north hall. There was indeed a trapped door down there, which Hazel declined to investigate further. She instead went upstairs to report her findings to her compatriots.

Innominus warned Grand Vizier Krock that he had a serious problem on his hands here, and advised him to allow the party to explore the whole house and "purge it of demons." The Vizier consented, and the group descended into the underground level and returned to the door behind which Hazel had seen the black gargoyle-demons.

Innominus kicked the door open, holding up his amulet of continual light. Vivuli held a vial of Holy Water on high, while Yor readied his deadly New Steel dwarven axe. Hazel kept an eye on their flank, flame tongue at the ready.

Combat ensued immediately, with the demons viciously clawing at Yor and Innominus as Viv chucked flasks, Innominus cast prayer, and Yor hacked and slashed at the demons to his heart's content. After a few rounds of bloody battle, one demon was dead and the second was attempting to escape the chamber via a gate it had summoned. Acting swiftly, Innominus cast dispel magic upon the demon's gate; the gate collapsed, spitting the demon back out onto the floor. Then Yor hacked it to death.

The Vizier, who had pissed and shat himself in terror upon the appearance of the demons, climbed out of the pool of excrement in which he had been cowering and thanked the party profusely.

There, more or less, the session ended.

"I have no problem chucking a guard up front to take the first blow."

--Yor

DM's Notes
Fun session! And our first with four separate online (Skype) video chat participants (that's me at the bottom of the screen). 

Viv Summons his Familiar in the Crapper
What an inventive piece of business. I had to let him do this, so here is the "back story" of Fu Man the Emperor Tamarin: He was traveling with a troupe of vaudevillians, whom he did not particularly like, and the group passed through Fortinbras on its way to Farn Junction. Fu Man escaped the caravan and then got caught out in the snow, and headed in the Manor window for warmth. There he met Viv in the crapper and became his new familiar.

Fu Man, Vivuli's monkey familiar.

Random Manor Generation
The reason the above maps are so hastily drawn is because no specific maps of the Manor interior existed until the PCs showed up there this session.  Of course, I knew a few facts about its general layout, and obviously I knew the broad strokes of what was going on there, but I mapped it on the fly and even used the Dungeon Alphabet p. 32 "Random Original Purpose of Rooms" to determine what was where once Hazel started prowling around upstairs.  Along this line, I also generated a couple of the sounds Hazel heard in the downstairs corridor intersection using the "Random Sounds" table on p. 148 of the AEC.

--
* With one (rather gratuitous) continuity error: as we started this session, the players and I both forgot that they were holding a wizard captive in a rented room at the King Hargon Inn.  We have since ruled that the PCs simply left their gagged captive at the King Hargon, under the supervision of some reliable dwarves.
** I have decided to deploy a d12-based "snow check" for every day of the Arandish / Minochian winter.  High numbers (10, 11, 12) indicate heavy snow, midrange numbers (5-9) mean light snow, and low numbers (1-4) mean no precipitation.  This session I rolled a "12."

Review: Digital Orc's Dad's Pepper Dish Recipe

From the kitchen of thoust Spawn of Endra:

I'm not much of an innovator in the Old School blogosphere, but I think I may have finally come up with something original*. I'm not a DM and I've never felt qualified to give a review of anything Old School, until now. I AM a proven Old School cook, so here's a review of a recent recipe for Gaming Grub posted by Mr. Digital Orc a few weeks back -- his Dad's Pepper Dish. I've recently moved to central Pennsylvania and Saturday evening I was bored and hungry, waiting for the Irenic apocalypse:

The hellish view from my back porch Saturday evening (slightly altered)

While looking for a recipe for ajvar I saw that I had bookmarked DO's recipe. I have been greatly impressed by the pickled banana peppers I get on subs around here, and so I'm on board to start working with these vegetables. And maybe Irene was coming inland and this would have be my last home-cooked meal for a while. Who knows?

The recipe is simple: 1/2lb bacon; 3lb red potatoes; 15-20 banana peppers; S&P to taste. That's it. Cook in phases in a covered skillet. Well, I looked at my skillet and could not see all this fitting in there, nor did I have a lid for it. So I went to the next biggest heavy implement: my Dutch Oven. Seriously. It took me a few hours to realize how weirdly appropriate this was. I started in simmering the bacon and then adding in the red potato wedges:

I strirred/tossed this every 5min or so to spread the browning love. While this was going on, I was dealing with the peppers. I used Hungarian wax peppers ... presumably the same thing? But DO's instructions were confusing:

Remove caps and seeds of banana peppers, cut into 2 inch rings, add to skillet, allow to cook for 15-25 minutes until banana peppers cook down.

Being the type that will always play the system as written before house-ruling it, I cut the peppers into 2"-long, er ... tubes? In the end, I don't think this matters, but removing the seeds and membranes (my habit, not strictly in the recipe) from these is a real pain in the ass. But eventually I prevailed:

Very pretty. I let it cook away for about 15 minutes and then by that point there was a fair amount of browned bacon/potato residue on the bottom, so I pulled it off the stovetop and finished it in the oven at 350F for ~10 min to avoid a charred blackened mess. By the time I got to the peppers, all the stirring/tossing had pretty much gotten it to a chunky mash consistency. In the end, after adding some black pepper and 1-2 tsp of salt, I had a right mash if there ever was one:

I'll admit, as this thing moved along I had some doubts. The recipe looked like it had some serious gaps, and the fact that it was turning into a hash/mash ... well, maybe that's right but who knows? DO doesn't say how it should look. Then I'm thinking, "If this sucks, what kind of an asshole am I to write a negative review of somebody's sketch of a favorite recipe on a blog about gaming? That's the worst possible Old School blogosphere asshole imaginable!" Indeed, such a creature will appear on the cover of Raggi's new Random Blogospheric Asshole Generator, due out this Fall from Goodman Games.

But all of this worry was for naught. I have no idea if this is the correct outcome (i.e., the hash format), but this dish was DELICIOUS. The bacon of course is going to be nice, but because of the potatoes it doesn't make the dish overly salty (you still need to add salt at the end). The bacon fat makes the potatoes creamy but not heavy, and the juices from the peppers permeate the dish and add a really nice noticeable but mild, clean heat to the dish. The tanginess of the peppers adds a distinct flavor and if you've got good bacon these two things provide all the seasoning you need outside of S&P.

Okay, it's good, but how good? Well, at the end of the night here's what the dutch oven looked like:

That's right. I ate the whole damn thing all by myself over the course of 4-5 hours, right off the stove top. 3lbs of potatoes, 1/2 lb bacon and 15-20 peppers, down my gullet. Could not stop and didn't want to. Such a simple and sublime dish. Having this on your stove top is a sign of good living. I think if you were to cook this for game night, probably double the recipe.

In Conclusion: Digital Orc's Dad got this dish right and is presumably a genius. It embodies everything I love about rustic one-pot cooking. 4.5** of 5 stars
 

_____________________________________________


*   I've been looking at some older posts from Grognardia, The RPG Corner, Jeff's Gameblogs and DNDWPS lately and it's shocking to see how many ideas I think are new have been circulated in the OSR back in fucking 2006 or 2008. Prog rock RPG setting? Yes, it's been done.

** I need to leave open the possibility of something even more awesome than this dish; otherwise, 5 of 5.

Mobile DM'ing Equipment - Combat Mat

Now that I have DM'ed my first Con game, I find myself thinking about my equipment needs a bit differently. For example, in the olden days (the 1990s), I used to use a huge, classroom-sized white board for drawing maps and diagramming complex tactical encounters for my home RPG'ing group. Now that I DM exclusively from Skype, I don't do that anymore -- my big whiteboard is down in the garage.

For OSRCon, I acquired a mini-whiteboard, and it worked really well during Con play for quickly drawing a room layout or diagramming a combat scenario.

But then I got back from Toronto and saw the above picture of James Maliszeski's Crystal Caste "combat mat" and then read this comment where he tells exactly where to buy it [and more recently, some other folks have jumped on the trend].  I got really inspired by this, for I realized that a flexible mat like that would be great for on-the-road DM'ing, and it even has gridlines and hexes on alternate sides to boot.  So now, thirty bucks (with shipping) later, I have a flexible combat mat on its way to my house.  

Oddly, at the time I ordered the mat, the revelation I share in the next paragraph literally did not occur to me at all.  It was not until after I ordered the mat and reflected upon my consumerist victory that this related idea emerged and I realized (too late!) that I may have inadvertently taken a step toward creating a huge monster.

For the purchase of this combat mat inevitably leads me to the topic of miniatures, an aspect of our beloved hobby with which I have never directly engaged.  Yes, you read that right, I have never owned nor painted a single miniature.  I have gamed a small handful of times using them, but only when someone else brought them along.  I don't dislike using them if they're on hand; I have just never felt the need to actively seek them out.  I have an ambivalent relationship with fantasy miniatures.

But now I have that damn battle mat coming, and there's also this recent news about a line of miniatures being released specifically to complement Labyrinth Lord. I have to admit, that second set of soon-to-be-released minis shown here, the "Level Two Monsters" box, looks kind of badassed:

Includes 3 Gnolls, 3 Ghouls, 3 Zombies, 4 Troglodytes, 2 Shadows, 3 Large Crab Spiders, 3 Berserkers, 1 Green Slime, 1 Yellow Mold and an Evil Magic-User.

So should I invest in a few minis (for practical purposes if nothing else) since I have already thrown down for the combat mat?  Or is this how a horrible obsession starts?  It just seems like having a few minis to accompany the mat would make a smart combination of practical materials for quickly sorting out combat situations at Cons and the like, when (real-world) time is a factor. 

I think the biggest down side to my collecting any minis at all is that I have no interest in painting them.  Sitting around painting minis does not (at this juncture) strike me as much of a good time.  But then again, once you buy them, have you not taken that critical first step toward the dark side?