Wednesday's Who's Who: Lord Thalaron

Today we have the dubious pleasure of meeting Lord Thalaron. Upon spending any significant time with Lord Thalaron, most people describe him as a "vainglorious prig," "overweening prat," "idiot," "fool," or any of a number of terms that question the legitimacy of his birth.

Or any combination of the above.

Help Me Obi-Wan.... You're My Only Hope....

My friends, out there in the blogosphere, you are my Obi-Wan this morning. You all are my General Kenobi. I need your help.

Specifically, I'm looking for a Sci-Fi RPG. I love me my D&D for sure. However, sometimes I long for a little blaster-zapping, planet-skipping, alien-hunting fun.

The problem is, I just don't know where to go for that fun.

Map Monday: Barrow of the Ideskoror Kings

Hundreds of miles to the east of Coldtreath, across the Nyndael Mountains, lies the ancient realm of Ideskoror. This ancient realm was governed over by the Ideskoror family from the throne at Ideskoror Castle. The castle itself is long gone; The Birchtrick Forest has retaken the castle grounds. The castle stones are long turned to gravel; not even a foundation remains to mark its location at the base of the Tackrind Cliffs. All that still exists to prove that the Ideskoror family ever lived is their burial mound: the Barrow of the Ideskoror Kings.
(Click here for .pdf)

Found Items Friday: Paradise Squared

Following in the footsteps of last week's "Found Item Friday" in which this blog took a more personal slant towards "Found Items" rather than game-oriented items, I want to follow up today on the dice collection post of a couple weeks ago.

Yes, I went out and fed the monster: I have new dice. Come and take a look!

A DM is Trustworthy, Loyal, Helpful.... Oh, wait....

In my pre-work scanning of the gaming blogosphere this a.m. I came across an interesting concept from Stuart, the mind behind the Strange Magic blog.

GM Merit Badges.

That got me to thinking: "What kind of a DM am I?"

Then I got to thinking: "Where can we have these made/sold for real-life use?"

Then I got to thinking: "Real-life DM Badges...is that really too nerdy of an idea to work?"

Anyway, here's my electronic DMing Bandolier:

NPR's Top 100 Sci-Fi/Fantasy Books

I found this in a round-about way (HT to Sword and Board) as I think my eyes would bleed if I were forced to listen to NPR for more than 5 minutes. You can find a printable version of the list here. Apparently 60,000+ voted on this list; it's an interesting list.

Found Items Friday: Personal Library Edition

Today's Found Items are not particularly related to anything one can find in a treasure trove. However, I consider them to be pretty precious. And, I suppose, there are a considerable number of idea germs to be found therein.

Books.

Used books.

I love me a good used book store. The smell of old paper, ink, with just a hint of mustiness? That's the sign that some well-loved books are hidden among the dross.

New Critters, Part 1

Courtesy of one of my more recent favorite blog finds, Monsters and Manuals, I was reminded of a great random generator site, The Forge (thanks to noisms' post here).

The Forge is a random generator for names: spells, creatures, places, and "general" fantasy names. I spent a little while playing with it after reading the post at Monsters and Manuals to renew my acquaintance with the engine. While you occasionally get something that makes little or no rational sense, more often than not you get a great thought-provoking ember.

The first four creatures' names The Forge generated for me are as follows:

1. Howler Snake


2. Arm Spider


3. Shard Fish


4. Wind Starfish

All of these are perfectly servicable and, in fact, bring some terrific images to mind. Now all I have to do is craft some stats to go with them.

Yeah. I have PLENTY of time for that after a week away from the office.

Crap. [sigh]

Thanks, noisms. Thanks a heck of a lot.... Actually, I truly mean that. Thanks for the reminder about The Forge.

Note: I promise, there will be some posts of substance coming soon. Really, I promise. I owe a massive amount of Joesky tax right now.

Search Term Hilarity

Just had the strangest search term hit on this blog I've had since the blog started.

The search came from the German Google and was for "pains of being beautiful." This blog ranked #16 on the search. When I first saw it, I could not for the life of me figure out why my blog could have been included.

Then I clicked the link. It came up with this post from April, wherein I described an NPC in this way: "Thoklin knew a little bit about the pains of being beautiful; she inherited only a fraction of her mother's looks and she knew nothing but harrassment and hassle for that beauty." [Emphasis added.]

Huh. I had completely forgotten that.

Who woulda thunk it?

Paradise

The name of today's entry is an homage of sorts to my father, who passed away just about seven weeks ago. I miss him greatly.

It's an odd homage, seeing as how he never really approved of my playing RPGs--kind of tolerated it and accepted it only.

But when I was young, he designed and crafted a needlepoint/plastic canvas Christmas tree ornament that was two white d6s hanging from a little tab that had our family name on it. His explanation? "Our family is my paradise!" Pair of dice? Get it? Yeah...we all groaned too. But my father and I shared a love for puns and bad jokes.

Have I told you how much I miss him?

Anyway, today I'm jumping in on the game-blog bandwagon to bare my dice collection to the world. Those who know me know I love dice. My main gaming group all games with our laptops, using DMGenie to track everything, which rendered the use of dice a little ridiculous.

But I still collect dice. (Details below. Warning! It's image-heavy.)