NOT a review: Dyson's Delves Limited Edition Hardcover IS...

Pronounceth Spawn:

I got my copy of Dyson's Delves, the limited edition hardcover version, the other day from Lulu. This isn't a review since I haven't used it in play yet. I've just been reading it and looking at it and walking around my house with it and enjoying the thing as a physical, non-computer-enslaved object.

Saying the work of Dyson Logos is awesome (or even AEWSUM!!!!1!!) is like saying water is wet, charcoal is black, bacon is delicious, and so on. The reader learns nothing new about the subject with such descriptions of the obvious. Hence this is not a review.

Why buy this book when you can just download many of his maps for free? you might ask. Aside from the new material he's added and the clean layout ... and the thing is handy-sized and lays flat, and there are so many sweet maps right there in your hand and you don't have to be looking at a fucking computer to use them ... well, perhaps in terms of a stunted marginal-utility theory there is no point in buying this book.

But seeing so much quality work in one small package rather than having it stretched out over years of blog posts is impressive to me. Much easier to flip through a book than flip through a blog. I'm so happy this book exists, because -- yes there's all the 'inspiration' you can get from it, and even multiple layers of nostalgia if you remember the original post or have played one of these dungeons -- you get to see one person's style and sense of the B/X paradigm concentrated in one object. And it's all The Goods and none of the BS: no polemic; no "The Way The Game Used to Be" essay; no "What's an RPG?" introduction; no "Rah! Rah! OSR!". Just balls-out quality stuff on its own terms. It makes me want to play B/X D&D because it's self-exemplary of all the best, most challenging and fun aspects of the system, while not being system-exclusive.

For me this book stands alongside other recent idiosyncratic works I'm stoked by, like The Dungeon Alphabet and Vornheim: The Complete City Kit. In the after-times when the e-media evaporate I may still have these books as I negotiate the post-apocalypse.

Rock.

Flailceratops Comes to the PA Turnpike

Ahoy from Spawn:

Driving back to State College yesterday after flying back into Philly, I stopped for some beverage at a travel center (or whatever they call it) on the Pennsylvania Turnpike. I happened to be wearing my least smelly of shirts at the time, that being the famed Flailceratops T-shirt. After having worn it in three countries, I received the only comments on it at this place (except when I met up with Hazel's player in Dublin last week; she said she loved my shirt). At the check-out counter the following exchange occurred:

Guy: Is that a real dinosaur or what?

SoE: Uh, no. It's made up. I mean the body's real, it's like a triceratops.

Guy: Yeah, I know triceratops but this flay ... flail-ceratops .... What's a flail?

SoE [with travel-scrambled brain]: It's a ... spiked ball and chain on a stick. [Motioning] For beating people with.

Guy: Oh. So why's it on a shirt?

SoE: It's a thing by an artist guy. For a book he made. So I got the shirt.

(I wasn't in a headspace to start talking about D&D at that moment, dear readers.)

Guy: Well it's amazing the way they come up with these names for dinosaurs and things that have been dead forever, not just dinosaurs but everything.

SoE: Yeah, there's a group of folks that check the Latin names to make sure they follow the rules and everything.

Guy: Yeah but for things that are so old and we have no idea what they were. Like right now there are ten flavors of ice cream that are exactly the same as Ben and Jerry's out there ...

SoE: Yeah?

Guy: ... but there are no names for them because they are completely unknown flavors. They were made up out of nothing. Unknown flavors.

SoE: Wow. Well it just goes to show ....

And then I left and got back on the turnpike. I have yet to fathom the true depths of that man's words.

It's Vornheim, Charlie Brown!

Says Spawn:

Click to embiggen, naturally.

I took Saturday off from dissertation writing and in addition to starting a batch of sauerruben (fermented turnips) and listening to Wagner and Beethoven, I managed to throw the above image together. It had been percolating in my brain since being reminded of the Vornheim font by this post and learning it can be downloaded here. As was mentioned in the comments, it's so evocative of a specific work that it's not a super-useful font, but it can come in handy for, e.g., Vornheim greeting cards, or similar nonsense like the above.

Had I thought of this a few months ago, this would have been "It's the Great Peryton, Charlie Brown!" I'm sure you can use your imagination for that.

The image comprises elements of original works by Zak S., James E. Raggi IV, Charles M. Schulz, and Andreas Johansson (the electronic font), none of whose claims to copyright or whatever I challenge.